Yesterday's announcement of $604 million investment over four years to fund up to 26 cancer treatments is fantastic news for New Zealanders living with cancer. We are very pleased to see that the announcement includes the fulfilment of a promise to fund 2 new cancer drugs for gut cancer patients.
The funding of Atezolizumab & Bevacizumab (Tecentriq & Avastin) is a major milestone for patients with advanced, unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer). For the first time, patients in Aotearoa will have access to an active, first-line treatment option as opposed to the current approach for these patients of providing the best supportive care.
Funding for Cetuximab (Erbitux) or Panitumumab (Vectibix) in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line therapy is the first time in over 20 years a new medicine has been made available for bowel cancer patients. This new treatment will be available for patients with metastatic, RAS wild-type colorectal cancer.
We are yet to receive specific information as to when these new treatments will be made available and will update as soon as we know more.
Today's announcement also indicated that another 13 currently unnamed cancer treatments will also be funded. Pharmac will use the money provided to fund treatments currently listed on its 'Options For Investment' list.
Currently there are number of gut cancer drugs on this list, including:
Pembrolizumab/ Keytruda (unresectable or metastatic deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) colorectal cancer)
Durvalumab/ Imfinzi (Biliary tract cancer)
Nab-paclitaxel/ Abraxane (Pancreatic Cancer)
Bevacizumab/ Abevmy (metastatic colorectal cancer)
Ripretinib/ Qinlock (Gastro-intestinal stromal tumour).
At this stage we do not know if any of these drugs will be funded, or when we will know if Pharmac will fund them.
We also note that there remains an onus on Te Whatu Ora/ Health New Zealand to plan and fund the services around implementation of these new treatments - care for cancer patients including administration and monitoring requires a skilled staffed workforce and gaps in recruitment remain around the country.
In summary, we are delighted that the pre-election commitments made to liver and colorectal cancer patients have been fulfilled. We will continue to keep pushing for those treatment options that have not yet been funded and will keep you updated as we receive news.