Golden age of prostate cancer drug discovery and development as NICE draft guidance recommends new prostate cancer drug
"Responding to new NICE draft guidance recommending enzalutamide as an option for treating hormone relapsed metastatic prostate cancer in adults:
Professor Alan Ashworth, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
“Advanced prostate cancer is very difficult to treat, and it’s taken a coordinated effort to finally bring new drugs into the pipeline, after decades where there were no options once old-style hormone treatment stopped working.
“What we’re seeing now is an unprecedented period of success for prostate cancer research, with four new drugs shown to extend life in major clinical trials in just two years, and several others showing promise. It truly is a golden age for prostate cancer drug discovery and development.”
Followed on by.......
NICE has let us down again.
In England if a patient has previously been prescribed abiraterone they will not be allowed to have enzalutamide yet in Scotland these rules do not apply.
Doctors in Scotland can prescribe enzalutamide regardless. This is grossly unfair and is clearly based on cost factors rather than considering the benefits to cancer sufferers.
I have to admit an interest in all this. I am currently taking abiraterone which no longer works and my oncologist would switch me to enzalutamide if allowed but Northern Ireland slavishly follows England.
We can still change NICE's advice – as with abiraterone – by signing one of the many petitions eg https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/nice-licence-enzalutamide-for-all-prostate-cancer-sufferers-not-just-those-in-scotland/sponsors/new or Prostate Cancer UK's at http://prostatecanceruk.org/get-involved/campaign/our-campaigns/access-to-new-medicines/enzalutamide
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