NEWS Brain cancer drug help

AUSTRALIANS living with an aggressive form of brain cancer will benefit from a subsidy for expensive treatment from next month.

Together with new treatments for leukaemia and inflammatory disease of the large blood vessels, the drug Avastin will be available to patients for just $40.30 per script, or $6.50 with a concession card, from August 1. That is well down on the $31,200 per course of treatment some of Australia’s 1000 suffers currently pay.

The new subsidies were approved by an independent committee and Health Minister Greg Hunt will today announce the Government will provide $56 million to fund them.

Avastin won’t cure the brain cancer known as recurrent and refractory glioblastoma (GBM) but it has been shown to buy patients three to four extra months of life.

The drug works to block a protein the cancer needs to grow blood vessels.

Sydney father and investment banker Michael Clout has welcomed the new subsidy for anti-leukaemia drug Sprycel which has so far extended his life by five years.

Diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (Ph+ALL) in 2011, he was given two and a half years to live.

However, after taking part in a trial of the new drug Sprycel while receiving chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a cord blood transplant he has defied the odds.

“I’ve been in remission for several years and I’m enjoying life as I was previously,” he told News Corp.

“I’m training in the pool, running after the kids and taking a 50mg pill every morning.

The medicine kills the leukaemia cells in the bone marrow and allows normal red and white cell and platelet production to resume.

It is expected that 80 patients per year will benefit from the medicine, which, without Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme subsidy, would cost more than $51,900 per year.

Nearly 900 patients with a condition called giant cell arteritis will benefit from a new subsidy for the drug Actemra.

This inflammatory disease can cause blindness.