NICE are deciding whether to fund four new drugs for advanced kidney cancer
35 experts, 7 administrators, 15 public observers… one very important decision. Last week, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) held a meeting in Manchester to finally decide whether or not to recommend four drugs for advanced kidney cancer on the NHS.
Regular readers of this blog will know that the original decision not to recommend these treatments back in August 2008 was met with outcry from kidney cancer patients and their doctors alike.
Cancer Research UK was also dismayed by this draft guidance – and through this blog we sought the views of the public to help shape how we would respond to NICE. Our response spelt out why we felt this decision was unfair – and we appealed to NICE to reconsider.
In keeping with NICE’s processes, a second appraisal meeting took place last September- where the responses from the manufacturers of the four drugs, and from other stakeholders – including Cancer Research UK – were discussed.
The final meeting was scheduled to take place in November 2008 – but due to some last minute clinical evidence submitted by the manufacturers of two of the drugs – Pfizer, who make sunitinib (Sutent) and Bayer, makers of sorafenib (Nexavar) – the meeting was postponed until January 2009.
Although Cancer Research UK was frustrated by this delay, we appreciated that NICE needed the extra time to assess this new evidence.
Posted by Emma Gilgunn-Jones 
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