UK High Court grants Eisai and Pfizer judicial review

The UK High Court has granted Japan's Eisai and USA-based Pfizer permission to proceed to a Judicial Review to challenge the decision by the National Institute of Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE), the UK advisory body which recommends medical treatments in England and Wales under the National Health Service, to refuse support of drugs for new patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (Marketletter November 27, 2006). The grounds put forward and accepted by the High Court as the basis for the review are procedural fairness, as the NICE refused to disclose its cost effectiveness model; the irrationality of certain assumptions and conclusions; and the discrimination in the use of the Mini Mental State Examination with certain patients.