Roche gets UK approval for low-cost Tarceva

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :06/10/2008 09:29:57

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has recommended Roche’s Tarceva for use on the National Health Service after the Swiss drugmaker agreed to cut the price of the lung cancer drug.

The new price for a 125-day course of treatment is £6,128, compared with a previous typical cost of £6,800 pounds, according to NICE's website.

Roche and NICE, the body responsible for determining which treatments should be funded by the state in England and Wales, said on October 3, they had reached a deal for Tarceva to be supplied at the same overall treatment cost as Sanofi-Aventis's Taxotere.

The draft recommendation is expected to be confirmed in final guidance to be issued next month by NICE. It had previously recommended against Tarceva, arguing that buying the drug was not a good use of NHS resources.