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The breast cancer treatment Kadcyla (trastuzumab emtansine) will now be available routinely on the NHS in Wales after Roche, the drug’s manufacturer, agreed the same commercial access deal with NHS Wales as was recently agreed with NHS England.
Kadcyla is licensed to treat HER2-positive breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, cannot be surgically removed and has stopped responding to initial treatment. At full list price, treatment costs £90,000 per patient.
Funding for Kadcyla in Wales will initially come from the £80m new treatment fund that was announced by Welsh cabinet secretary for health Vaughan Gething in January 2017. In England, Kadcyla is currently funded through the Cancer Drugs Fund but, after a confidential agreement was reached between Roche and NHS England last week, the drug is expected to become routinely available on the NHS later this summer once current draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, England’s health technology assessment body, gets ratified.
