NICE approves Eli Lilly’s abemaciclib for advanced breast cancer
pharmafile | August 12, 2021 | News story | |
NICE has approved Eli Lilly’s abemaciclib, given with fulvestrant, for hormone receptor-positive HER2-negative breast cancer which has spread to other parts of the body in adults who have had endocrine therapy.
Taken as a twice-daily pill, abemaciclib is a drug called a CDK4/6 inhibitor and works by inhibiting proteins in cancer cells which allow the cancer to divide and grow.
It normally costs £2,950 for a packet of 56 150mg-tablets (excl VAT), but the company has agreed a confidential NHS discount.
This approval follows an improved patient access scheme from the company. This, together with further economic modelling data provided by the company in response to the committee’s call for analysis which reflected its preferred assumptions, means that abemaciclib can now be recommended as a cost-effective use of NHS resources.
Meindert Boysen, Director of the Centre for Health and Technology Evaluation at NICE, said: “Advanced breast cancer is an incurable condition and the aim of treatment is to delay it getting worse and extend survival. The committee heard that CDK4/6 inhibitors like abemaciclib were welcomed by patients because they can delay the time before their cancer gets worse and so delay or avoid the need for chemotherapy.
“The committee also heard from the patient experts that exemestane plus everolimus, the treatment that would normally be used at this stage, was poorly tolerated and used for only a small number of people because it has similar effects to chemotherapy on quality of life.
“We are therefore very pleased to be able to recommend that abemaciclib with fulvestrant can now be provided routinely as another option for people with advanced breast cancer who have already had endocrine therapy.”
Abemaciclib is currently available through the Cancer Drugs Fund as an option where exemestane plus everolimus would be the most appropriate alternative treatment to a CDK 4/6 inhibitor.
Even with the uncertainty around the clinical and cost effectiveness estimates, overall the committee concluded that abemaciclib plus fulvestrant was cost-effective for the NHS.
Lilly Subbotin
