Roche's Avastin Rejected By UK Cost Body For Bowel Cancer

ZURICH (Dow Jones)--The U.K.'s health-care cost regulator Wednesday said it won't recommend Roche Holding AG's (ROG.VX) Avastin to treat patients with bowel cancer, due to the medicine's high cost and limited efficiency.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, said Avastin in combination with chemotherapy fails to meet the body's
standards, amid which the benefits of a drug need to justify its costs.
The decision is NICE's final guidance. The body determines which drugs and medical devices should be paid for on the U.K.'s taxpayer-funded
National Health Service.
Like other regulators around the globe, NICE has been increasingly skeptical about expensive treatments amid an overall effort of government
bodies to curb costs."The evidence we reviewed for Avastin in combination with chemotherapy suggests that patients receiving it for colorectal cancer may on average
live for six weeks longer than patients receiving standard chemotherapy and a placebo," NICE Chief Executive Andrew Dillon said.
"We know how important this could be to patients and we are disappointed not to able to recommend this drug combination, but we have to be
confident that its benefits justify its considerable cost."
Roche, whose efforts to convince the body to recommend Avastin for reimbursement have repeatedly failed, said the decision was disappointing.
Roche's Avastin is also facing similar regulatory resistance to be reimbursed for breast cancer patients. Analysts even fear the drug could lose its licence for this indication amid criticism from the U.S.
Avastin can cost between $4,000 and $9,000 per month.
"Due to its current restraints in methodology, NICE is unable to recommend Avastin for bowel cancer, despite it being available in virtually every
other comparable country in the world," Roche said in a statement.
"We are keen to work with the appropriate authorities to determine the right long term solution to access to medicines. In the meantime, doctors will have the Cancer Drugs Fund in the U.K. to fall back on," Roche added.
The recently established Cancer Drugs Fund allows U.K. physicians to ask for funding for drugswhich aren't recommended by NICE.