UK patients to benefit from five-minute breast cancer treatment

Breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy will be offered a new combined treatment, Phesgo, which is injected and takes as little as five minutes to prepare and administer, compared with two infusions that can take up to two and a half hours, NHS England has announced.

Swiss pharma giant Roche’s (ROG: SIX) Phesgo, a fixed-dose combination of Perjeta (pertuzumab) and Herceptin (trastuzumab) with hyaluronidase, was approved by the European Commission in December last year, at which time the European regulatory decision still applied to the UK under the Brexit transition arrangements.

More than 3,600 new patients each year will benefit from the treatment, as well as others who will switch from the treatment they are on to the single injection, following an NHS deal with the manufacturer. Pricing details were not disclosed.