Three new entries to Cancer Drugs Fund
pharmafile | February 5, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | CDF, Kadcyla, NHS, Tafinlar, UK, xofigo
Three drugs – Roche’s Kadcyla, Bayer’s Xofigo and GlaxoSmithKline’s Tafinlar – have been added to England’s Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF).
Kadcyla (trastuzumab emtansine) has been earmarked for patients with breast cancer, Xofigo (radium-223 dichloride) for those with prostate cancer and Tafinlar (dabrafenib) for unresectable or metastatic melanoma.
No drugs have been removed from the list.
The CDF, which is overseen by NHS England, provides an additional £200 million per year to enable cancer patients to receive treatments not routinely funded by their local NHS.
The fund aims to give uniform access to cancer medicines, limiting the ‘postcode lottery’ aspect of NHS prescribing which is an ongoing source of irritation to patient groups and to pharma itself.
Yet while welcomed by many, this is not without controversy: the CDF increases patients’ chance of receiving certain drugs, but its cost-effectiveness and the political motivation behind it have been repeatedly questioned.
The three new additions to the list have been chalked up following a review of trial data – taking into account efficacy and safety in particular – by the Chemotherapy Clinical Reference Group (CRG), one of many advisory bodies on which NHS England draws when making its decisions.
“The process of updating the list is led by cancer specialists, and should ensure that patients benefit quickly when new drugs become available that are backed by good evidence from trial data,” explained the group’s chair, Professor Peter Clark.
The Chemotherapy CRG is “working closely with clinicians and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to ensure a rapid review process for new drugs that may be appropriate for inclusion on the CDF list”.
Kadcyla, which was also approved a year ago in the US, combines the manufacturer’s own Herceptin and ImmunoGen’s DM1 chemotherapy in one molecule, and is the first antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) for treating HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.
Xofigo was shown the green light in Europe in November for castration-resistant prostate cancer which has spread to bone tissue, and is already licensed in the US for the same indication.
Tafinlar was approved in 2013 for the treatment of inoperable or metastatic melanoma with BRAF protein mutations and GSK is seeking other indications for the brand.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “Better access to effective medicine is a priority for the government, and we are delighted that these new drugs will mean more patients will join over 38,000 cancer sufferers who have already benefited from the fund.”
Adam Hill
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