Positive draft guidance from UK's NICE for GSK's Trobalt and TMC's Angiox

The UK’s drug watchdog body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) last week issued draft guidance suggesting that GlaxoSmithKline’s (LSE: GSK) epilepsy drug Trobalt (retigabine) and USA-based The Medicine Company’s (Nasdaq: MDCO) heart drug Angiox (bivalirudin) should be available for use on the National Health Service.

The NICE provisionally advises that recently-licensed Trobalt, which helps control seizures in adult who have epilepsy, could be prescribed as an add-on treatment option if other medicines have been ineffective or produced unmanageable side effects.

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterised by recurring seizures. It affects between 260,000 and 416,000 people in England and Wales, 55% of whom will experience partial onset seizures, which are caused by too much electrical activity in one part of the brain. When this excessive activity reaches the whole brain, it is called secondary generalisation.