Overview
- The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved Enhertu for NHS reimbursement in England on Thursday, reversing a 2024 decision that had found the drug was not cost effective.
- AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo said roughly 1,000 women a year in England will be eligible for the treatment through the NHS.
- Clinical trial data from 2022 show Enhertu extended median survival by about six to seven months on average compared with chemotherapy for patients with HER2-low metastatic breast cancer.
- NICE said a commercial solution between the manufacturers and the health service, together with recent changes to how late-stage cancer drugs are valued, made the approval possible while the full terms of the agreement remain undisclosed and the drug’s listed UK price is £1,455 per 100 mg vial.
- Enhertu has been available in Scotland since 2023 and the companies will now seek access approvals in Wales and Northern Ireland while patient groups said the earlier rejection cost lives and urged faster rollouts elsewhere.