Herceptin and Gilvec Steal the Show

Two cancer therapies have stolen the show at this year’s UK Prix Galien, jointly winning the Innovative Product Award.

Roche’s breast cancer therapy Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Novartis’ leukaemia drug Gilvec were recognized for outstanding achievement in research and development.

One of the most important news drugs of last year, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, Gilvec is the first in a new class of cancer therapies for use in chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and gastrointestinal stromal tumours.

CML is treated with bone marrow transplantation, however is associated with up to 40% mortality, and the average survival rate for the estimated 4,000 CML patients in the UK is four to six years from diagnosis. Gilvec also won the International Galien prize in October this year.

Herceptin, one of Roche’s leading drugs, is a novel targeted therapy for patients with advanced breast cancer who express the particularly aggressive HER2 gene. Around one in five women have HER2 positive disease, but Roche says combined treatment with Herceptin and Paclitaxel offers up to a 40% increase in survival. NICE recommended earlier this year that Herceptin be made available for use on the NHS, and said that “Improvements in survival of this magnitude have rarely been recorded in women with metastatic breast cancer.”

(Source: Pharma Times Weekly)