BRIEF—China issues guidance for use of new cancer medicines

China has issued a guideline for clinical use of "new types of oncology drugs," or precision medicines and monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), covering seven common cancers including lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia.

Listed 42 drugs include ibrutinib, bevacizumab, lenalidomide and trastuzumab.

These are the active ingredients of AbbVie’s Imbruvica, Roche’s Avastin, Celgene’s Revlimid and Roche’s Herceptin, respectively.

According to the guideline, which aims to prevent clinical abuse and overtreatment, the drugs will be prescribed only by doctors at secondary and tertiary hospitals after gene testing and histopathology results.

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