Over the past decade, new and innovative drugs to treat cancer are being developed at an ever increasing rate which is of course a good thing. However, many are left trying to fund their own treatment, this puts an ever increasing pressure on the NHS budget and in this week’s Scrubbing Up, Professor Jane Maher warns that patient with rare cancers may be being squeezed out. Improvements haven’t been uniform across different types of cancer. Despite the drug not being licensed for this indication, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is looking at the possibility of raising Roche/ Gene tech’s Avastin to treat wet age related macular degeneration.

The spokeswoman for the firm told PharmaTimes UK News that “It is very unusual for Ministers to ask NICE to develop technology appraisal guidance on the use of a drug outside its licensed indication. This is particularly so when there is a licensed and NICE recommended alternative already available on the market”. She also said “More than 7,500 patients have been enrolled into Lucentis wet AMD trials and several large, randomized controlled trials assessing the drug in new indications such as diabetic macular oedema and retinal vein occlusion have recently reported, while Avastin, in contrast, was formulated and developed for the intravenous treatment of cancers and not for administration in the eye”.

With Novartis seemingly peeved at the development, she stressed “The legislation governing the development and licensing of medicines exists primarily to safeguard patient safety, [and] Novartis is very concerned that that this instruction could undermine this framework and place patients at unnecessary risk”. The Institute does not normally assess drugs outside of their licensed indications however it is able to do so on request by the Department of Health.