Cancer therapies ‘are being held up’
HEALTH: Cancer patients are having to wait for life-altering new therapies because a “riskaverse” system is failing to ensure they are fast-tracked, researchers have warned.
The Institute of Cancer Research says the treatments took the longest to progress through trials and approval to reach patients .
CANCER PATIENTS are having to wait for life-altering new therapies because a “risk-averse” system is failing to ensure they are fast-tracked, researchers have warned.
The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) has claimed that the most innovative treatments took the longest to progress through trials and approval to reach NHS patients over a 16-year period.
While more cancer drugs are being licensed, researchers warn the overall discovery and development system is too “risk-averse”.
The London-based organisation said the strict regulations on clinical trials and licensing are resulting in patients waiting even longer for the treatments.
New drugs must pass through clinical trials and authorisation, and be approved as cost-effective for use on the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). Many targeted treatments are initially effective but cancer can evolve and become resistant, meaning innovative new treatments are needed.
The researchers said: “We found that the more highly innovative drugs did not progress faster through development. In fact, we observed that the higher the level of innovation assigned to a drug, the longer on average it took to move from patent priority date to Nice final appraisal determination.”
They added: “Of concern, in view of the need for drugs that work in new ways, our findings suggest that the system for Nice appraisal has not given priority to approving the most innovative cancer medicines.”
The ICR carried out the analysis in preparation for its Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, which will house the world’s first drug programme dedicated to these issues.
Its study, published in the journal Drug Discovery Today, provides an overview of access to all drugs licensed through the European Medicines Agency (EMA) from 2000 to the end of 2016.
The rate of drugs licensed by the EMA doubled over the period, increasing from an average of six per year from 2000-08, to 13.5 per year from 2009 to 2016.
There were large numbers of EMA authorisations for certain cancers, such as skin and breast, but none for others, such as brain and oesophageal cancer, which have “very high unmet need”.
The average time from a patent being filed to availability on the NHS rose over the period from 12.8 years for drugs first licensed
The higher the level of innovation, the longer it took for appraisal. Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research.
between 2000 and 2008, up to 14.0 years for drugs licensed between 2009 and 2016.
The researchers found the most innovative drugs took 14.3 years to become available on the NHS, compared with 13.5 years for medium-innovation drugs and 11.1 years for the least innovative treatments.
A Nice spokesman said: “Key messages taken from the ICR’s analyses fail to recognise both the significant changes Nice and NHS England have made to accelerating the evaluation and adoption of new cancer medicines, and the increasing complexity and uncertainty associated with many new treatments.”
It says it now makes more positive recommendations than eight years ago.