Roche’s Perjeta approved by NICE for breast cancer treatment

Roche's breast cancer therapy Perjeta has been recommended in new guidance from the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

The new guidance endorses Perjeta for routine NHS use as a neoadjuvant treatment for HER2-positive, locally advanced, inflammatory or early-stage breast cancer in combination with trastuzumab among patients at high risk of recurrence.

This overturns NICE's previous stance, outlined in May this year, which deemed that the drug had not yet demonstrated sufficient long-term clinical benefits, particularly in terms of overall survival.

A further analysis of the available clinical evidence, plus the drug's proven cost-effectiveness for the NHS, helped to sway NICE's decision to approve Perjeta.

Richard Erwin, general manager at Roche UK, said: "This positive decision is particularly welcome as, until recently, no new medicines for breast cancer patients had been approved in the last nine years."

He added that the subsequent approval of three new breast cancer medicines in the last three weeks is a positive trend that should be maintained.

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