Zytiga cost too high, says NICE
pharmafile | February 2, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | NICE, Zytiga
NICE is not recommending Janssen’s prostate cancer pill Zytiga because of its high cost.
Zytiga (abiraterone) is not recommended, in combination with steroids prednisone or prednisolone, as a second-line treatment for metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer in patients who have failed on Sanofi’s Taxotere.
NICE currently recommends the chemotherapy agents mitoxantrone, 5FU, and carboplatin for this setting, which have a much lower acquisition cost to the NHS.
In draft guidance the watchdog said that Zytiga could increase survival by more than three months compared to placebo, but its annual cost of £35,160 was too much for the NHS in England.
Janssen has offered a patient access scheme for the drug that would discount its list price, but NICE said even with this in place, the drug was still not cost effective.
NICE said that the firm could offer a revised discount, which could help the drug through the NICE process. A second appraisal hearing will be held at the beginning of March.
Sir Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, said: “Abiraterone is a drug that could potentially extend life by more than three months, compared with placebo. For patients one of the key benefits of this drug is that it can be taken orally at home.
But he added that the committee felt the drug didn’t enough benefit to patients to justify the price the NHS is being asked to pay, even with the discount offered.
NICE also felt that the treatment did not meet the criteria to be considered under the watchdog’s special arrangements for drugs treating people at the end of their life, as the population for which it is licensed cannot be considered to be small.
The Institute calculates that the drug can treat 3,300 men in this disease setting, and this will increase to around 5,500 by next year.
Zytiga can be accessed via the government’s Cancer Drugs Fund, which injects £200 million a year into the NHS for new cancer drugs that are awaiting NICE recommendation, or have not been endorsed by the watchdog.
It is one of the most commonly approved treatments coming from the Fund in the last nine months, with 480 approvals between April and December last year.
Today’s decision follows NICE’s rejection of Sanofi’s injectable chemotherapy drug Jevtana, which is also seeking a recommendation as a second-line treatment for prostate cancer patients.
Jevtana costs around £22,200 for six rounds of treatment, but NICE considered this price too high in its final draft guidance issued last month.
Ben Adams
Related Content
Combination treatments: Takeda’s Implementation Framework and the broader landscape
Pharmafile talks to Emma Roffe, Oncology Country Head (UK & Ireland) about the combination treatment …
NICE recommends Pfizer’s new once-weekly treatment for haemophilia B on NHS
Walton Oaks, 21st May 2025 – Pfizer Ltd announced today that the National Institute for Health and Care …
Dual immunotherapy for bowel cancer now available under NHS
Dual immunotherapy, a combination of Opdivo (nivolumab) and Yervoy (ipilimumab), has been granted extension in …
