NICE backs Roche’s Perjeta for breast cancer
Roche | February 01, 2018
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has issued a final green light securing routine NHS funding for Roche’s Perjeta in patients with a certain type of breast cancer. The guidelines follow a confidential commercial agreement for Perjeta (pertuzumab) agreed between NHS England and the drugmaker late last year, paving the way for its move from the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) to the NHS’ routine commissioning stream, when used to treat advanced HER2-positive breast cancer. The drug has been available via the CDF since 2013, benefiting around 1,300 patients per year, and NICE’s decision now “offers hope following several years of uncertainty over how this treatment would be funded in the longer term,” said Roche. “This is the news we have been waiting for. It is great to see that Roche, NHS England and NICE have worked together to ensure that people with advanced breast cancer now, and in the future, can continue to have access to Perjeta,” said Dr David Miles, consultant medical oncologist, Mount Vernon Cancer Centre. More than 53,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed every year in the UK, of which between 15 and 25 percent is HER2-positive.