‘Milestone’ pill that halts spread of ovarian cancer

DAILY pills that halt the spread of ovarian cancer have been licensed for use in the UK, in a step greeted as a ‘critical milestone’ for thousands of women.

The drug freezes tumours for months at a time, halting relapse and giving women a crucial break from relentless rounds of gruelling chemotherapy.

It has now been licensed by the European Medicines Agency, allowing it to go on sale privately from today. But if watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) approves it for the NHS at a meeting in January it could be available to about 6,300 women a year.

Ovarian cancer, known as a ‘silent killer’ because it has few symptoms until too late, affects about 7,400 women in the UK every year, killing 4,100.

Roughly 85 per cent of patients experience recurrence after their first treatment, meaning they often face repeated bouts of chemotherapy to keep the disease under control. The new drug, niraparib – two or three pills taken together once a day – buys valuable months of normality before the disease returns and the next chemotherapy round begins.

A similar drug, olaparib, was made available on the NHS two years ago but was restricted to women with the BRCA gene mutation, famously carried by Angelina Jolie. But niraparib will be available to all ovarian cancer patients who relapse, regardless of their genetics, after a major clinical trial showed they could all benefit from the treatment.

Niraparib is one of a group of new cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors, developed by researchers in Sheffield, Cambridge and London over the last 20 years.

These exploit a weakness in cancer cells’ defence, zeroing in on their ‘Achilles heel’ to kill a tumour without harming healthy cells. Previously scientists believed cancers with the BRCA gene mutation were the only ones with this weakness. But new research reveals the chink in the cancer’s armour exists in all tumours, although the weakness is bigger in BRCAmutated cancers.

In women with an inherited BRCA gene mutation, the time to relapse was increased from 5.5 months to 21 months compared with chemotherapy alone.

Niraparib was also shown to help women without a BRCA mutation, doubling the length of time before recurrence from 3.9 months to 9.3 months.

Professor Jonathan Ledermann from University College London, who was involved in the trial, said: ‘Niraparib is the first treatment of its class licensed to delay the progression of ovarian cancer following platinum-based chemotherapy regardless of BRCA status.

‘This represents a critical milestone in the management of ovarian cancer. Access to effective and tolerable medicines is sorely needed and the hope is that niraparib will be available in the NHS as quickly as possible.’

Niraparib will be sold under the brand name Zejula at about £80 a pill – £58,661 a year for the 200mg daily dose or £86,786 for the 300mg dose. Manufacturer Tesaro is likely to offer the NHS a substantial discount on this price.

Research suggests PARP inhibitors could also play a role in defeating breast and prostate cancer.