Breast Cancer Now responds to NICE’s decision to reject fulvestrant as a first-line treatment for routine use on the NHS.

Campaigns and policyFulvestrant is given by injection
The breast cancer drug fulvestrant is given by injection

NICE has today (Friday 1 September) published draft guidance which does not recommend fulvestrant (known commercially as Faslodex and manufactured by AstraZeneca) as a treatment for post-menopausal women with hormone positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have not already had treatment with hormone therapy (aromatase inhibitors or tamoxifen).

Although NICE accepts that fulvestrant stalls the cancer’s growth by around three months (compared to the standard treatment of aromatase inhibitors), they concluded that it is too early to say from the available evidence if this leads to an increase in overall survival.

It is estimated that around 1,200 postmenopausal women diagnosed with breast cancer would be eligible for first-line…

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