{"id":97279,"date":"2025-08-27T22:03:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T22:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97279\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T22:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T22:03:28","slug":"precious-breast-cancer-drug-withheld-from-nhs-in-price-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/97279\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Precious\u2019 breast cancer drug withheld from NHS in price row"},"content":{"rendered":"

A breast cancer drug that could extend the lives of hundreds of women is being withheld from the NHS in an escalation of a pricing row with the pharmaceutical industry. <\/p>\n

Gilead Sciences, one of the world\u2019s biggest drugs companies, said it would not submit its medicine for assessment by the NHS watchdog Nice, blaming the UK for \u201cundervaluing medicines\u201d.<\/p>\n

To get past the threshold for assessment, the company said it would have to discount it to such a low price there was no way it could make an \u201cappropriate profit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Patients\u2019 charities said the row would mean women missing out on a \u201cprecious chance to live longer\u201d thanks to \u201ca broken system\u201d. <\/p>\n

Peter Wickersham, Gilead\u2019s general manager for the UK and Ireland, said: \u201cThe UK has all the ingredients to be a world leader in life sciences for its citizens and its patients. Unfortunately, it\u2019s impossible not to see the decline that is taking place right in front of our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the company had taken the \u201cunprecedented decision\u201d not to submit its drug Trodelvy for Nice assessment for the HR-positive HER2-negative form of breast cancer. That means it will not be made available to the 500 women in England who would be eligible on the NHS were the drug to get Nice\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Peter Wickersham, the UK head of Gilead Sciences, warned that women in the UK would \u201cfall behind\u201d those in other European countries<\/p>\n

ASHWORTH PHOTOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Wickersham added: \u201cCancer patients in the UK \u2014 and specifically England \u2014 are going to fall behind European countries where this medicine is widely available.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trodelvy, which is delivered in hospital via a drip, is routinely available in European countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as well as the US, Canada and the Middle East. <\/p>\n

In the UK it is available privately. A patient weighing 65kg would have to pay roughly \u00a345,000 for the average course of five-and-a-half months. Alternative treatments are available on the NHS.<\/p>\n

Gilead\u2019s withholding of the drug threatens to further damage a disintegrating relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the UK medical establishment.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, walked away from talks with the industry about the rate companies pay in a medicines \u201cclawback\u201d tax. Streeting had previously acknowledged the need for the NHS to pay more \u201ccompetitive\u201d prices for drugs, but lost patience with industry representatives when they rejected what he called \u201cgenerous proposals\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Health<\/p>\n

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, is locked in a dispute with drug companies<\/p>\n

JORDAN PETTITT\/PA<\/p>\n

Under the tax deal, struck in 2023, companies agreed to repay income on NHS purchases of branded medicines above a certain threshold. At the time, the repayment rate was forecast to be 15 per cent, but it rose to 22.9 per cent this year. <\/p>\n

The row has been heightened by President Trump\u2019s threat to lower prices paid for drugs in the US to match those paid overseas, increasing pressure on pharmaceutical executives to try to ramp up their income from other markets. But Wickersham said: \u201cThis situation existed before. The only thing that President Trump and the US administration has done is to shine a light on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the collapse of the talks with Streeting \u201csimply reinforces the lack of urgency around changing the current situation\u201d. He added: \u201cOn every front \u2014 not just [the rebate scheme] \u2014 we are being told that reform will take years, or decades in some cases. If we accept this mindset, we are accepting that patients will miss out and that the UK will fall further behind its peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before a drug can even be bought by the NHS, it must gain approval from Nice. The Gilead boss blamed the Trodelvy blockage on the way in which the watchdog judges the worth of medicines. <\/p>\n

Nice assesses drugs on the additional cost of providing an extra \u201cquality\u201d year of life for a patient compared with existing medications. It will generally only approve a drug that provides that extra year for less than \u00a320,000 to \u00a330,000. For end-of-life treatments, an additional \u201cseverity modifier\u201d is added, allowing up to \u00a350,000 per year to be charged for the most severe diseases. <\/p>\n

Wickersham said this scheme made it impossible for the company to see any way Trodelvy could get through the process and leave the company with an \u201cappropriate\u201d profit margin. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see a path to achieving cost effectiveness given the methodology that Nice currently uses with its severity modifier.\u201d <\/p>\n

Gilead, which has its headquarters in California, reported global sales in 2024 of $26.8 billion (\u00a319.8 billion), up 8 per cent on 2023. In its quarterly results, published earlier this month, it said Trodelvy brought in $364 million in April to June, $96 million of which came from Europe. <\/p>\n

Claire Rowney, chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, a research and support charity, also criticised Nice. \u201cThis decision confirms our fears that a deeply unfair system has not only led to the rejection of a life-extending treatment for use on the NHS in England but is deterring drug companies from even putting new treatments through a Nice appraisal. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe devastating human impact is people with incurable secondary breast cancer \u2014 mothers, daughters, sisters \u2014 having their precious chance to live longer stripped away because of a broken system.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Nice spokesman said the agency\u2019s record speaks for itself. \u201cUnfortunately, Nice cannot recommend a drug be provided to NHS patients if the company does not take part in our work \u2026 We have made 25 positive recommendations for breast cancer treatments in the past seven years out of 26 appraisals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2022 the percentage of positive recommendation for cancer treatments is 84.8 per cent, and for advanced cancer treatments it is 81 per cent. We provide rigorous, independent assessment of complex evidence for new health technologies to make sure the NHS can continue to offer the most effective treatment options to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wickersham, 52, who is American and took the helm of Gilead\u2019s British business 18 months ago, praised the potential of the UK. \u201cIt has unparalleled basic science and research. It has world-leading universities. The potential for the UK to have a top-flight life sciences environment is there.\u201d But he said it was \u201cfrustrating\u201d that potential was being put at risk by \u201cunderinvestment in medicines, which has been decades in the making\u201d.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that the Nice system and NHS purchasing power \u201ccertainly generates value for the taxpayers\u201d by achieving some of the world\u2019s lowest drug prices. But he added: \u201cThe UK spends 9 per cent of its healthcare dollar on medicines, when other countries are 12 per cent and more. So it\u2019s clearly an outlier. We\u2019ve passed the tipping point now where that\u2019s not beneficial for patients in the UK. Companies will not seek reimbursement for medicines, as we are not doing in this instance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilead has submitted an application to the Scottish Medicines Consortium \u2014 which Wickersham said has traditionally been more flexible in its approach than Nice \u2014 with the outcome due in 2026. Wales and Northern Ireland tend to follow Nice decisions; the company can apply separately but is unlikely to do so as the eligible populations are so small.<\/p>\n

Trodelvy is already available on the NHS in England for women with triple-negative breast cancer, a different form of the disease. <\/p>\n

A government spokesman said: \u201cWe value the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s vital role in our economy and healthcare and we\u2019re committed to supporting its growth. We\u2019re already delivering key actions to unleash life sciences as a force for our health and wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A breast cancer drug that could extend the lives of hundreds of women is being withheld from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-97279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}