England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has rejected Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in patients who receive locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who have had platinum-containing chemotherapy.
Merck sponsors Keytruda.
The drug has since been removed from the Cancer Drug Fund, where it was available previously.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said it couldn’t recommend the drug because of cost-effectiveness.
By law, the Food and Drug Administration is required to determine whether a drug, device, biologic, or medical device is “safe and effective.” But the FDA determination does not control whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will pay for it. To satisfy CMS, medical products and services must be “reasonable and necessary,” meaning...
As a radiation oncologist, I am struck by how often the decisive variable in lung cancer is not the sophistication of our therapy, but the timing of our encounter with the disease. The American Cancer Society projects 618,120 cancer deaths in the United States in 2025, with lung cancer remaining as the single largest contributor,...
