NICE, the healthcare guidance body, has issued draft guidance recommending enzalutamide (Xtandi, Astellas Pharma) as an option for treating hormone relapsed metastatic prostate cancer in adults.
Enzalutamide works in a different way to other drugs currently available for treating prostate cancer and is recommended as an option for treating hormone relapsed metastatic prostate cancer in adults, only if their disease has progressed during or after 1 docetaxel-containing chemotherapy regimen and the manufacturer provides enzalutamide with the discount agreed in the patient access scheme.
Commenting on the draft guidance, Professor Carole Longson, director of the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE, said: "There are few treatments available for patients at this stage in their cancer so we are very pleased that we are able to produce draft guidance recommending enzalutamide.
"It is an effective treatment and it also allows patients to be treated at home as it can be taken orally."
Until final guidance is issued, NHS bodies will make decisions locally on the funding of specific treatments. Once NICE issues its final guidance on a technology, it replaces local recommendations across the country.
