Rarer Cancer Forum pleads with UK's NICE to fund Bayer's Nexavar

The UK's National Institute for Heallth and Clinical Excellence (NICE) will convene tomorrow after two years of delays, to exercise its final opportunity to reverse the fate of thousands of UK advanced primary liver cancer patients who were told last November that they will be denied their only survival option, Nexavar (sorafenib) on the National Health Service.

As the NICE panel convenes to hear the appeal from the drug manufacturer, Germany's Bayer Schering Pharma, the Rarer Cancer Forum (RCF) pleads with the NICE to re-consider the evidence in favor of the drug, in order to avoid leaving thousands of UK patients with no treatment option at all - and no hope as the process reaches its final stage.

Andrew Wilson-Webb, chief executive of the RCF, said: 'What happened to the recommendations from the Richards Review in November 2009 and the new End of Life policy from NICE? These policies were specifically designed to help patients with rarer cancer such as Liver to access new treatments for a previously untreatable disease. We can only hope that NICE take this final opportunity to allow advanced liver cancer patients the chance they deserve to potentially benefit from this drug.'