British Colorectal Cancer Patients May be Denied Access To Avastin and Erbitux

The UK health authorities need to make up their mind. Either they will let the UK patients have technologically cutting edge medicine or they will not.

Just this week, there were two news reports that sent mixed signals. In one news report NICE, the watchdog agency that decides whether Brits can have access to cutting edge, but expensive medicine or not, has decided in favor or paying for Herceptin for women with breast cancer.

British authorities have been under intense pressure to back wider use of Herceptin after women with early-stage disease went to court to force local health authorities to pay for it. Until now, Herceptin has been recommended for treating only metastatic cancer, a late-stage condition in which tumors have spread around the body. The new approval extends its use to a much large number of mainly younger patients.

And on the other hand, there is another report that suggests that NICE may be considering exactly the opposite for patients eligible for Avastin and Erbitux...

The Appraisal Committee has prepared a Final Appraisal Determination on the use of Avastin and Erbitux in metastatic colorectal cancer and submitted it to the Institute. The main recommendations made are as follows: Avastin ( Bevacizumab ) in combination with 5-FluoroUracil plus Folinic Acid, with or without Irinotecan, is not recommended for the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. Erbitux ( Cetuximab ) in combination with Irinotecan is not recommended for the second-line or subsequent treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer.

So, is it now the turn of Colorectal cancer patients to fight for their prescriptions?

You Betcha!

Its really sad what the British patients have to go through to have access to medicines that are available to them without question in US.

Strange Bedfellows OSI & Genentech

Biotech makes for strange bed fellows! Take for instance OSI pharmaceuticals and Genentech. On one hand Colin Goddard worked hard to cultivate the relationship with Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson so that the Big Biotech would invest in OSI drug Tarceva (and therefore give it the much needed cache), and on the other hand Genentech has caused the company to take a hefty $310M charge.

Of course Mr. Goddard is not giving up on Macugen (OSI's drug for Macular Degeneration).

We absolutely haven't given up on Macugen," chief executive Colin Goddard said. "We're not giving up on eye disease."

BUT

...Goddard said the company was cutting back on eye-care research "to make sure we can still deliver corporate profitability next year."

All this is due to the fact that Genentech launched its VEGF inhibitor Lucentis targeted towards macular degeneration, which has such a dramatic effect on macular degeneration that it is expected to wipe out Macugen's business.

Amazing, this drug Lucentis - A VEGF inhibitor

A while back I used to work in the area of Macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is an insidious disorder in which people start loosing their sight from the center to the periphery. Until recently there wasn't much available in terms of treatments, and the treatments available would basically stem the growth of the disease and nothing more.

But today there is hope for people suffering from "wet" type of macular degeneration. Genentech has just received approval (June 30, 2006) for a new drug called Lucentis. Here is what one patient had to say about this drug...

"Within a week I could see again, and by the end of the month, I was seeing perfect," she said. "It was amazing how quick it happened."

Lucentis is a drug belonging to the class of agents called Angiogenesis Inhibitors. A drug belonging to this class which has made a lot of press recently in Cancer is Avastin, also made by Genentech. While Avastin has not been studied in macular degeneration, there is no reason why this drug won't be successful as well - because mechanistically, it does the same thing that Lucentis does - block the VEGF protein which causes unconstrained growth of blood vessels. Turns out, for the same treatment, Avastin may actually be a more economical treatment. No doubt some one will study the effects of Avastin on Macular degeneration soon, which will be a good thing for the patients. It also could bode bad for Lucentis sales...

Lucentis, which is covered by Medicare, costs about $2,000 for one eye injection each month; Avastin costs $17 to $50 a month for one injection.

So keep an "eye" on these new developments.

Here is the full article about Lucentis and Avastin