29 July 2016 - Medicine regulator NICE will act as gatekeeper for new treatments, leading to fears NHS patients may be denied them on cost grounds.

Cancer patients in the UK will miss out on drugs available in other countries under new arrangements for deciding which expensive medicines the NHS will pay for, according to a charity.

Breast Cancer Now has criticised the relaunched Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), which was originally a pot of money to pay for costly new medicines not considered cost effective or not yet assessed by NICE.

Pharmaceutical company Roche, which makes a number of cancer drugs that have already lost CDF funding, is also unhappy. Richard Erwin, the general manager of Roche UK, said: “Cancer patients in England face an uncertain future as the new Cancer Drugs Fund comes into operation and many drugs have already lost funding.

“Now that the assessment of new cancer medicines for reimbursement has been returned to Nice, we must, as a matter of urgency, address the challenge they have in assessing the real clinical value of cancer treatments – which necessitated the creation of the original CDF in 2010.”

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