Revealed: The costly cancer drugs that DON’T extend lives

MOST cancer drugs given a European medical licence do nothing to extend or improve the lives of patients, a study has concluded. Researchers found this was true of 57 per cent of treatments approved by the European Medicines Agency between 2009 and 2013.

Many were provided in Britain through the Cancer Drugs Fund.

Even when drugs did show survival gains over existing treatments, the benefits were marginal, the study said. Treatments that did improve life expectancy gave patients only an extra 2.7 months on average, often at the cost of thousands of pounds.

The researchers, from King’s College London and the London School of Economics, said drugs firms were giving patients false hope and exposing them to needless side effects.

‘There is a clear need to raise the bar for approving new cancer drugs,’ said Huseyin Naci of LSE. ‘It is remarkable that cancer drugs enter the European market without any clear data on outcomes that matter to patients and their doctors: longer survival and better quality of life.’

Approval by the EMA allows drugs companies to market and sell their medicines across Europe, including in Britain.

The NHS, however, will not use them unless its watchdog NICE assesses them as showing value for money.

In many cases drugs approved by the EMA have been rejected by NICE, leading to years of back-and-forths and arguments about medical rationing.

Some of the drugs deemed by the researchers to have shown no benefit are now available to UK patients – but only after manufacturers vastly reduced their prices.

Others were provided on the Cancer Drugs Fund, a scheme set up by David Cameron in 2011 to provide access to medicines not approved by NICE.

That scheme came under severe criticism after it vastly overspent its budget, meaning many treatments were cut from the fund.

The researchers, whose work is published in the British Medical Journal, wrote: ‘When expensive drugs that lack clinically meaningful benefits are approved and paid for within publicly funded healthcare systems, individual patients can be harmed, important societal resources wasted, and the delivery of equitable and affordable care undermined.’

The team assessed 68 cancer treatments approved during the study period.

They found most drugs had not been assessed for long enough to provide any meaningful survival data, and instead were licensed on the basis of other factors such as whether tumours stopped growing.

Only 35 per cent of treatments yielded evidence that they prolonged life when they were first approved. Ten per cent showed they improved quality of life. But 57 per cent had no evidence of either.

Scientists stress it takes time to prove a drug will improve life expectancy. And patient groups insist when someone is dying with cancer, even a few extra months of life with loved ones is priceless.

Lead author Dr Courtney Davis of KCL said: ‘ When expensive drugs that lack robust evidence of clinical benefit are approved and reimbursed within publicly funded healthcare systems, individual patients may be harmed and public funds wasted.’

A spokesman for the EMA said: ‘EMA has had no time yet to analyse the findings of the BMJ study properly.

‘What we can say is that EMA has discussed the evidence underpinning cancer medicines widely and welcomes further debate on this.’

The Government in April introduced rules allowing NHS England to restrict or delay treatments if the total cost exceeds £20million a year.

‘Analyse the findings’