NICE rejects Avastin for ovarian cancer, but backs Lucentis for RVO

The UK’s drugs watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has this morning (May 22) advised the National Health Service against funding the drug Avastin (bevacizumab) from Swiss drug major Roche (ROG: SIX) for advanced ovarian cancer. In two separate pieces of final guidance published for the health service, NICE concludes that funding the treatment on the NHS does not represent the best use of taxpayers’ money.

Sir Andrew Dillon, the NICE’s chief executive, said: “The NHS has finite resources so it’s important that only the most cost-effective treatments – drugs that work well considering their cost and potential side-effects – are recommended. NICE has published guidance on two specific uses of bevacizumab as an advanced ovarian cancer treatment and we’re naturally disappointed that we can’t recommend it in either instance. Unfortunately, the evidence provided to the Appraisal Committee - which developed these two pieces of guidance for NICE - highlighted that, in both cases, bevacizumab was not cost-effective.”

Commenting, Roche said it is disappointed that the NICE has today published final guidance against the use of Avastin to treat two groups of women; those with newly-diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer and those whose ovarian cancer has returned after first-line treatment has failed (recurrent). Bevacizumab is one of the only few drugs that has been shown to improve outcomes for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the company noted, pointing out that it can halt the progression of first-line disease for an average of six months and an average of four months in recurrent disease when used in combination with chemotherapy, compared to chemotherapy alone.