Preliminary NICE guidance negative on Pfizer's Xalkori for lung cancer; backs Colobreathe and Tobi Podhaler for CF

Much to the disappointment of the company, this morning (March 27), UK drugs watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said it does not recommend global drugs behemoth Pfizer’s (NYSE:PFE) Xalkori (crizotinib) for use on the National Health Service.

Crizotinib is the first of a new class of targeted therapy launched in the UK last year. While the NICE has acknowledged that crizotinib may offer eligible patients better outcomes compared to standard chemotherapy, it has provisionally rejected crizotinib because it does not consider the medicine to be cost-effective.

Crizotinib has a conditional licence from the European Medicines Agency for use in patients with previously treated advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have been identified as ALK-positive following a diagnostic test. It is the only therapy approved specifically for this subset of NSCLC patients (which accounts for around 5% of NSCLC cases) and signals one of the most recent advances in personalized therapy in lung cancer.