‘It’s Time for Trodelvy’: Charity launches petition against Gilead for drug access
pharmafile | July 19, 2021 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Cancer, Gilead, NHS, charity
The charity Breast Cancer Now has launched a petition calling on Gilead to provide free-of-charge access to its new treatment Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan) for eligible patients with triple negative incurable secondary breast cancer – once the drug is licensed and ahead of a decision being made around its routine use on the NHS next year.
Breast Cancer Now has raised with both Gilead and NHS England the need to grant interim access to Trodelvy, as soon as the drug is licensed, to guarantee that it quickly reaches these women who desperately need treatment and don’t have time to wait.
The charity cites a recent interim access agreement made for the first Project Orbis drug, a lung cancer treatment, to be available on the NHS for patients and is calling on Gilead to follow suit by working with NHS England and providing Trodelvy free-of-charge on the NHS on a short-term basis.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, Chief Executive at Breast Cancer Now, said: “Trodelvy offers some women living with triple negative secondary breast cancer the life-changing chance of extra months with friends and family and to be here for more moments that matter. It’s a tragic state of affairs that women already facing limited treatment options could be denied the hope of potentially benefitting from this promising drug if Gilead does not provide Trodelvy free-of-charge.
“These women, who are already facing heartbreakingly short prognoses, simply do not have time to wait for the treatments they so desperately need. That’s why we are launching a petition today that urgently calls on Gilead to provide Trodelvy free of charge, until it is assessed for routine use on the NHS. They must do the right thing and come to an agreement with NHS England to allow this to happen.
“We know the impact of uniting to call for the right thing for breast cancer patients and this is why we are calling on people to sign our petition now, to help us start to turn the tide on triple negative secondary breast cancer.”
Trodelvy is a targeted therapy that delivers a chemotherapy drug straight to cancer cells which have the protein Trop-2 on their surface. This is the case in many types of cancer, including breast cancer. The treatment is suitable for patients with unresectable locally advanced or secondary triple negative breast cancer who have had at least two prior therapies.
Kat Jenkins
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