UK’s NICE Rejects Seagen’s Advanced Breast Cancer Drug

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended that the National Health Service not offer Seagen’s Tukysa (tucatinib) in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine for treating HER2-positive advanced breast cancer.

The UK cost regulator said it couldn’t currently justify the drug’s costs, but that it was working with the company to try to reach an agreement. In the UK, the average cost of treatment for the combination therapy is approximately $9,676 for an initial dose and $9,207 for subsequent treatment courses.

Tukysa, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, blocks a specific area of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 gene on cancer cells, which stops the cells from replicating.