Trodelvy UK approval still won't see women get the breast cancer drug as pricing not agreed

Today’s news of the licensing of Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan) brings little comfort to women with triple negative incurable secondary breast cancer, as the drug’s developer, company Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD), failed to reach an agreement with NHS England to provide the drug free-of-charge to eligible patients, ahead of a National Institute for Health cand Care Excellence (NICE) decision on routine National Health Service (NHS) access next year, says the charity Breast Cancer Now.

Instead, hundreds of women in England who already face short prognoses and limited treatment options could now face an agonizing wait of up to eight months to access Trodelvy and the chance it brings of precious extra time with loved ones and doing what matters most to them.

Trodelvy’s licensing through the Project Orbis scheme, which the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) joined at the start of the year, comes only a day after that of a lung cancer drug, sotorasib, and four months after another drug, both of which were successfully made immediately available to patients following licensing via an interim access scheme agreed by the drug companies Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) and AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) with NHS England.