Roche cuts Tarceva price to help NICE case

Swiss drug major Roche has reduced the price of its lung cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib) by about 28% in England and Wales, while the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the body that determines which drugs are provided by the National Health Service in the two countries, considers an appeal by the firm against an earlier recommendation to deny the product's reimbursement (Marketletter March 19).

Roche claims that up to 4,000 patients have died since the drug's marketing approval in the UK, due to the reluctance of NHS trusts to pay the $13,800 cost per patient, in the absence of an endorsement by the NICE.