NICE gives positive recommendation for combination therapy to treat advanced RCC
It has been announced by Eisai that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has given a positive recommendation for the use of Kisplyx (lenvatinib) in combination with everolimus for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
“We are delighted that NICE is recommending lenvatinib in combination with everolimus for routine access to adult patients for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) following one prior vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-targeted therapy. RCC is difficult to treat and patients therefore need effective alternative treatment options when their disease progresses,” commented Gary Hendler, chairman & CEO EMEA, chief commercial officer, Oncology Business Group at Eisai. “We look forward to a further recommendation by NICE for lenvatinib in early 2018 for the treatment of adult patients with progressive, locally advanced or metastatic, differentiated (papillary/follicular/Hürthle cell) thyroid carcinoma (DTC), refractory to radioactive iodine (RAI), as this is long overdue and patients have had to wait for almost 3 years already.”
“This is tremendous news for people with advanced renal cell carcinoma. We have been eagerly awaiting this news from NICE for many months. It will be a great relief to patients and their families to know that their clinicians now have the lenvatinib plus everolimus combination as an effective treatment option in the second line,” added Rose Woodward, founder and patient advocate, Kidney Cancer Support Network. “Kidney cancer is a desperately difficult cancer to treat, and NHS patients need to be confident they can access the latest treatments when they need them. The kidney cancer community is especially grateful that NICE and Eisai have worked together to ensure patients have access to this new clinically effective drug combination.”
The decision by NICE is based on data from study 205, a randomised trial of 153 advanced RCC patients who had progressed after one previous VEGF therapy. The results showed that there are significant differences in efficacy between the combination of lenvatinib and everolimus and everolimus monotherapy — combination therapy improving progression free survival and median overall survival rates.
Eisai is a global research and development-based pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and production of innovative oncology therapies.