AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso receives provisional NICE recommendation

AstraZeneca's lung cancer therapy Tagrisso has been recommended in new draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

The UK regulator has provisionally recommended the osimertinib therapy for people with EGFR T790M-positive cases of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer, which are considered to be difficult to treat.

This once-daily tablet therapy works by targeting cancer cells, directly meaning patients suffer less severe side effects than with other chemotherapy-based treatments. In clinical trials, almost twice as many patients responded to Tagrisso compared with another chemotherapy treatment, while it also stalled cancer progression by an extra four months.

Around 300 patients will be eligible for treatment with this drug every year in England and Wales. Because it was previously included in the Cancer Drugs Fund, it will be immediately funded by NHS England.

Professor Carole Longson, director of the health technology evaluation centre at NICE, said: "For the first time, we are able to give patients access to a promising new cancer treatment whilst more evidence is gathered on its effectiveness. This is the system working as it should."

This comes after the treatment was approved by the European Commission back in February.

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