Dendreon’s Provenge too expensive to be recommended, says NICE in draft guidance

In preliminary draft guidance issued this morning the UK health costs watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has not recommended US biotech firm Dendreon’s (Nasdaq: DNDN) Provenge (sipuleucel-T) for prostate cancer in people whose disease has spread, who have few symptoms and when chemotherapy would not yet have been given.

The available evidence showed that the price the National Health Service is being asked to pay for the drug is too high for the benefit it may provide to patients. The independent Appraisal Committee concluded that funding the treatment would not be the best use of limited NHS resources.

NICE chief executive Sir Andrew Dillon said: “Sipuleucel-T is a new and innovative way of treating prostate cancer, using the patient’s own immune system to attack the cancer cells – but based on the evidence presented so far, it costs too much for the benefit it provides. It was shown to prolong overall survival compared with a placebo treatment, but there were uncertainties in the evidence about how well sipuleucel-T works compared with some other existing treatments. It was also not proven to delay the progression of the disease unlike current treatments, and this can potentially affect a person’s quality of life.”

In addition to the uncertainty of the clinical effectiveness of sipuleucel-T, there were also uncertainties about the amount of money the NHS might have to pay for the treatment.