NICE U-turn on Roche’s MabThera
pharmafile | May 25, 2011 | News story | Sales and Marketing | MabThera, NICE, Roche
NICE has provisionally recommended Roche’s MabThera as a maintenance therapy for blood cancer patients.
The new draft guidance backs MabThera’s (rituximab) use as a first-line maintenance treatment in patients with follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who have responded to first-line induction therapy with the drug in combination with chemotherapy.
In its previous draft guidance issued in March the cost-effectiveness body said it was minded not to recommend the drug because of uncertainties in Roche’s data.
But new evidence from the pharma company, combined with advice from clinical specialists, suggests that treating patients with MabThera maintenance therapy after induction therapy can prevent the spread and growth of this particular cancer by three to four years.
Roche also swayed NICE with its new economic modelling which convinced the committee that the drug could be a cost-effective use of NHS resources compared with current clinical practice.
Professor Peter Littlejohns, clinical and public health director at NICE, said: “Using rituximab as a maintenance treatment after initial chemotherapy for follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma could be a valuable treatment option for hundreds of patients because no such maintenance treatment has so far been available at this stage of the disease.
“The evidence presented to the committee highlighted that it could keep a patient’s cancer in remission for longer, after they have had chemotherapy.”
Dr Robert Marcus, consultant haematologist at Kings College Hospital in London, said: “With this new treatment approach, previously untreated patients have the opportunity to benefit from longer periods of remission with minimal impact on their quality of life.”
This approach is already available on the NHS for patients receiving second-line therapy.
However, using MabThera as a first-line approach means that patients will no longer have to wait for their cancer to return in order to qualify for antibody therapy to delay relapse.
“Follicular lymphoma remains an incurable disease characterised by multiple relapses and periods of remission that become progressively shorter,” Marcus explained.
“There is a school of thought that believes that increasing the duration of first remission may have a significant impact on the total duration of freedom from disease achievable in this condition.”
Ben Adams
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