Claire Rowney chief executive at Breast Cancer Now says:
“We welcome the new cost-effectiveness threshold coming into force, a change we’ve called for as part of our tireless campaigning to ensure greater access to drugs for incurable metastatic (secondary) breast cancer, for those who so desperately need them.
“Over recent years, low cost-effectiveness thresholds have played a key part in blocking the approval of groundbreaking new medicines, sadly denying people with breast cancer the chance to benefit from them. This includes Enhertu for HER2-low secondary breast cancer, rejected for use on the NHS in England in 2024.
“While this doesn’t resolve all the issues in the system, the new threshold presents a critical opportunity for the companies to resubmit Enhertu to NICE for approval, so it could be made available to people with HER2-low secondary breast cancer in England. We’re urgently calling on pharmaceutical companies Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca to seize this moment to give thousands of mums, daughters, sisters, wives and friends more time to live.
“It’s totally unacceptable that they’ve been denied access to this vital life-extending treatment to date, and we need to see this change happen now.
“We’re relentless in our determination to be Breast Cancer Now until we’re Breast Cancer Never, and ensuring access to the best possible treatments for everyone when they need them is critical to realising our bold ambition that by 2050, everyone diagnosed with breast cancer will live and live well.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
Enhertu (Trastuzumab deruxtecan) is the first treatment licensed for HER2-low secondary breast cancer.
Clinical trial DESTINY-Breast 04 found that Enhertu offered an additional 4.8 months of progression free survival than chemotherapy (median 9.9 months for trastuzumab deruxtecan compared to 5.1 months for chemotherapy) and an additional 6.4 months of overall survival (median 23.9 months for trastuzumab deruxtecan versus 17.5 months for chemotherapy).
It is estimated that around 1,000 people would be eligible for treatment with trastuzumab deruxtecan in England each year and more in Wales and Northern Ireland.