More patients with a rare form of breast cancer will be give a potentially life-saving cancer drug under new guidance released by a health agency in England.
Manufactured by MSD, the drug — pembrolizumab — can help shrink “triple negative” tumours. These occur in roughly 15% of breast cancer cases but are difficult to treat, according to the BBC.
Known commercially as Keytruda, the drug is an immunotherapy typically given alongside chemotherapy.
Although it’s been used in the country before to extend the lives of women with some forms of terminal breast cancer, the recommendation from England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) means it will now be offered to patients with earlier disease.
NICE is a public body that assesses whether drugs and medical devices offer good value for money. The release of this new guidance means the country’s public health body, National Health Service England, should fund the drug for eligible patients.
With a further review underway, pembrolizumab could soon be available to more patients.
Interim NICE director of medicines evaluation, Helen Knight, said in a statement: “Triple negative breast cancer has a relatively poor prognosis and there are few effective treatments compared with other types of the disease.
“Today’s draft guidance means that we have now recommended 3 new treatments for routine use in the NHS since June, helping to address this unmet need and giving hope of a longer and a better quality of life to thousands of people.”
Campaigners called the decision “fantastic” and said it would help around 1,600 people with primary triple negative breast cancer.
Breast Cancer Now chief executive Baroness Delyth Morgan said in a statement: “This less common but often more aggressive type of breast cancer is more common in women with an inherited BRCA gene, women aged under 40 and black women, and the risk of triple negative breast cancer returning and spreading to other parts of the body in the first few years after treatment is higher than for other types of breast cancer.”
Relatively few options have historically been available to these patients, she added. Increased access to pembrolizumab could mean not only that fewer people require invasive surgery and breast removal, but more may now survive “this devastating disease,” she said.
“This treatment must now urgently be assessed by the Scottish Medicines Consortium so that even more women across the UK have the chance to benefit from it,” she added.
For more latest Health News Click Here