Under the current system, when drugs lose their patent and become generic, meaning they can be sold by any manufacturer, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to file new license applications.
As a result, drugs that have shown promise for purposes other than those for which they were authorized, such as prevention rather than treatment, end up getting bogged down in red tape.
In 2017, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended that the drug should also be offered for prevention, for women at moderate to high risk of breast cancer.
But the recommendation had little impact, because it depended on the willingness of clinicians to prescribe it off-label.
Under the new system, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency authorized the new target, after pharmaceutical company Accord Healthcare agreed to apply for the license on a non-profit basis, other companies that produce the medicine being also invited to provide it. for prevention, but also for treatment.
Ms Pritchard says the changes, introduced on Tuesday, are a landmark moment in a mission to save lives lost to breast cancer and are part of efforts to detect more of the deadly diseases earlier and save more lives.
The successful rollout of the NHS Covid vaccination has provided a model for prevention and, just as we have seen with the impact of statins and blood thinners in preventing thousands of strokes and heart attacks, we know that “Reaching many more people with proven existing medications can be transformative,” she says.
Baroness Morgan de Drefelin, chief executive of the charity BreastCancerNow, said she was delighted with the rollout, which follows a decade of tireless campaigning by the charity, working with doctors, researchers and patients.
Thousands freed from fear of cancer
By Amanda Pritchard
Advances in NHS care and screening have helped ensure that more people than ever are surviving breast cancer. And we are committed to doing everything we can to prevent more lives from being lost to breast cancer.
Today is a significant moment in this mission.
We have seen extraordinary innovation in recent years, with health services rolling out brand new targeted therapies for different types of cancer to help improve and extend patients’ lives, while continuing to deliver value to the taxpayer .
However, not all innovations are expensive. Anastrozole is a cheap medicine costing just 4p a day and is already widely used by the NHS to treat breast cancer. But major trials have shown its effectiveness in reducing the risk of the disease developing first in women most at risk because of their family history.
In 2021, we were proud to create our new Drug Repurposing Program, a multi-agency initiative to ensure that opportunities to use existing drugs in new ways can be fully exploited, and today anastrozole becomes the first off-patent drug to be authorized for new use through this first-of-its-kind program.
We hope that this decision will not only ensure greater access to this option, but also mark another step towards a new era of cancer prevention, ensuring that we can truly make the most of the medicines we already have to help dozens of thousands more people reduce their risk of cancer. breast cancer.
An estimated 289,000 postmenopausal women are at increased risk of breast cancer, many of whom may have already seen a loved one experience the distress of diagnosis and treatment, and worry about the possibility of it. illness can have a huge impact on their lives.
Although the option of anastrozole represents a very personal choice and we know that not everyone will want to take it, we hope that ensuring that anastrozole is now authorized as a preventative treatment will help to ensure that all People eligible for this medicine can have the opportunity to take it.
Of course, all medications have side effects and we know it can be very difficult to choose a risk-reducing medication, but for tens of thousands of women, we hope that greater access to the choice of anastrozole can help us. helping more people live their lives freer from the fear of this devastating disease.
As the NHS continues its major disease prevention efforts, we must seize every opportunity to reduce the number of people living with serious illness, detect more life-threatening illnesses earlier and save more lives.
The successful rollout of the NHS Covid vaccination has provided a model for prevention and, just as we have seen with the impact of statins and blood thinners in preventing thousands of strokes and heart attacks, we know that ‘Reaching many more people with proven existing medicines can be transformative. .
Amanda Pritchard is the chief executive of NHS England
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