£68k-a-year skin cancer wonder drug on the NHS

SKIN cancer patients are to have access to a ‘wonder’ drug after officials approved its use on the NHS.

Nivolumab is twice as effective as chemotherapy. In trials, dying patients tended to live longer, had far fewer sideeffects – and some saw their tumours disappear.

The drug is one of the first of a new wave of immunotherapy treatments which harness the body’s own immune system and teach it to attack tumours.

NICE, the NHS rationing watchdog, will today recommend that nivolumab be provided to patients in England and Wales with advanced melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer.

The decision, which comes after months of behind- thescenes negotiations, should benefit 1,400 patients a year.

But thousands of others will still miss out because NICE indicated last month that it would not approve the same drug for those with lung cancer. The drug costs an average of £68,000 a year for lung cancer or skin cancer.

Experts welcomed NICE’s decision but urged it to make it available for more patients. Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said: ‘It’s vital that we get novel and exciting cancer treatments to patients as quickly as possible.’

The drug is delivered by a drip. In trials 58 per cent of patients with advanced melanoma survived for two years if they were on nivolumab. Only 27 per cent survived for the same period on chemotherapy.

The one-year survival rate was 73 per cent for those on nivolumab and 42 per cent for chemotherapy. Many patients survived for much longer.

NICE decisions are based on a ‘quality-adjusted life year’ score, by which the cost is calculated for giving a patient an extra ‘quality’ year of life compared to the best existing drugs. Officials decided that swapping existing treatments for lung cancer would be less cost effective than it would be for skin cancer.

For lung cancer, officials calculated that the cost would be £109,000 for each extra qualityadjusted year, but for melanoma it would be less than £30,000.

Some 13,500 patients are diagnosed with melanoma in the UK each year, with 2,100 deaths. For lung cancer, there are 44,000 new cases a year, and 35,000 deaths.