UK patients first in Europe to benefit from new skin cancer treatment

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended the combination therapy of Opdivo (nivolumab) + Yervoy(ipilimumab), both drugs from US pharma major Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), to treat National Health Service patients with advanced skin cancer.

This potentially life-extending option is to be made available on the NHS in England and Wales to treat adult patients with advanced (unresectable or metastatic) melanoma.The decision marks one of the fastest approvals from the NICE to date, issued just weeks after the combination was licensed by the European Commission on May 11, 2016, Bristol-Myers noted. In 2013, around 14,500 people in the UK were diagnosed and in 2012 nearly 2,100 died of the disease – an average of six people every day.

The drugs can stall progression of advanced (unresectable or metastatic) melanoma by an average of eight months compared with standard treatment. Nivolumab and ipilimumab are part of an exciting new class of immunotherapy cancer treatments that disable the natural restrictions1 preventing the immune system fighting cancer cells, the NICE commented.