SHA to fund Roche breast cancer drug Avastin in London

Women with aggressive metastatic breast cancer in the UK capital London now have access to a drug which could give them five-10 extra months of life but up until this month has been unavailable on the National Health Service, says Swiss drug major Roche (ROG: SIX).

The company’s Avastin (in combination with paclitaxel) will be funded by the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) in London for women with breast cancer which is known as “triple negative,” and those who have received a taxane when their disease was early stage. The drug has been rejected for NHS use in this indication by the UK’s drugs watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

This is significant because women affected by triple negative breast cancer have very few treatment options available to them; their cancer doesn’t respond to hormone therapies or HER2-blockers such as Herceptin (trastuzumab). Triple negative breast cancer is thought to disproportionately affect younger women as well as those from poorer socio-economic backgrounds and certain ethnic groups, said Roche, noting that this unmet medical need is compounded by the fact that these women are more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage of the disease.