Campaign to expand cancer drug subsidies

THEY are the breakthrough medicines turning cancer from a death sentence into a manageable disease but only one in five of the Australians who need them are getting them.

High cost immunotherapy treatments that use the body’s own immune system to fight cancer are being used by just 1500 of the 7500 cancer patients who could benefit according to a new report.

Patients, cancer groups, clinicians and pharmaceutical companies will today meet politicians in Canberra to call for changes to Australia’s regulatory and medical subsidy schemes to fast track access to the medicines.

They want medicine approval bodies to stop classifying cancers according to the body part they emerge in and instead classify them by their genetic signature as the US FDA has done.

This would open up treatments to many thousands of patients currently denied help.

Currently someone with melanoma, lung cancer and kidney cancer can get a subsidised immunotherapy treatment but if they have adenocarcinoma or Merkel cell carcinoma or other cancer types, the treatment is not subsidised.

“It’s irrelevant to talk about body parts when you are talking about the future of cancer medicines,” says Professor Ian Olver former Cancer Council chief who now works at the Sansom Institute for Health Research.

Pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme has commissioned a report which shows in Australia immunotherapies are approved for five cancer types.

Three of the immunotherapies are subsidised. The high cost of the other two ($80,000$100,000 a year) means patients can’t afford them.