NICE has issued final draft guidance not recommending sipuleucel-T for prostate cancer in people whose disease has spread, who have few symptoms and whose disease is not yet suitable for treatment with chemotherapy.

The available evidence showed that the price the NHS is being asked to pay for the drug is too high for the benefit it may provide to patients.

Sipuleucel-T, also known as Provenge and marketed by Dendreon, is a cell-based therapy which stimulates the patient’s own immune cells to identify and attack prostate cancer cells. The treatment involves collecting white blood cells from the patient (a process called leukapheresis). Outside the patient’s body, these cells are combined with a protein to make sipuleucel T, and then the cells are infused back into the patient.. Sipuleucel-T is the first drug for metastatic hormone-resistant prostate cancer that is not cytotoxic or based on hormone-related therapy.

Sipuleucel-T prolongs overall survival compared with a placebo treatment, but it is uncertain how well it works compared with other existing treatments. It was also not proven to delay the progression of the disease, unlike current treatments. Dendreon is asking the NHS to pay around £50,000 per patient for Sipuleucel-T.

For more details, go to: https://www.nice.org.uk/news/press-and-media/cost-to-nhs-of-providing-sipuleucel-t-too-high-to-be-recommended-in-draft-guidance