16 January 2018 - Germany’s drug assessment body has criticized a lack of data directly comparing drugs in a promising new class of cancer immunotherapy, saying physicians could be overwhelmed or misled by the available information.

IQWiG, the independent authority in Germany that evaluates new drugs and plays a key role in what price health services pay for them, has looked into new immunotherapy drugs for the treatment of bladder cancer as part of its so-called early benefit assessment.

It concluded there were some signs that patients who could not be helped by previous courses of standard chemotherapy could benefit considerably from Merck & Co’s Keytruda and Roche’s Tecentriq, but said physicians needed head-to-head drug trials to pick the best treatment option.

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