UK's NICE says no to AstraZeneca breast cancer drug Faslodex

There was negative news this morning for Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN), when the UK’s the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued its latest draft guidance saying it intends to advise the National Health Service against routinely prescribing the firm’s Faslodex (fulvestrant) that can be used to delay the growth of a particular type of breast cancer.

This is because NICE’s independent advisory committee does not believe that the evidence submitted by the drug’s manufacturer proves that it works significantly better than existing treatments, eg, aromatase inhibitors for postmenopausal women who have oestrogen-receptor-positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, and who have already received anti-oestrogen therapy (such as tamoxifen), and so its widespread use would not be a good use of resources.

The NICE said that, although AstraZeneca estimated that fulvestrant could extend life when compared to using the aromatase inhibitors, anastrozole and letrozole, the committee found this to be considerably uncertain (ie, network meta-analyses showed no statistically significant differences in overall survival). Also, while fulvestrant is shown to delay cancer growth better than anastrozole, there is no evidence that it is better at this than letrozole.