Janssen wins SMC approval for Zytiga

Janssen has welcomed news that the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has granted a recommendation to its prostate cancer drug Zytiga.

The Scottish regulator has endorsed the use of Zytiga with prednisone or prednisolone for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in adults whose disease has progressed on or after a docetaxel-based chemotherapy regimen.

In March, the SMC rejected the drug on cost-effectiveness grounds, but Janssen has now offered a patient access scheme that will reduce the price of the drug to a level that the organisation has been able to accept.

Use of Zytiga will be restricted to patients who have received only one prior chemotherapy regimen.

Janssen UK's director of external affairs Martin Price said: "We have gone to significant lengths to find a solution that allows eligible patients to be treated routinely on the NHS with this innovative UK-discovered medicine."

This comes after the company was granted a recommendation for Zytiga from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in June 2012.