NHS to Cover AstraZeneca's Enhertu After Pricing Deal — SkimNews
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- NHS England agreed on Thursday to cover AstraZeneca's breast cancer drug Enhertu, ending a years-long dispute that had raised questions about AstraZeneca's commitment to the U.K.
- The decision extends Enhertu to an estimated 1,000 people in England with metastatic breast cancer whose tumors have low levels of HER2.
- The coverage is partly the result of a U.S.-U.K. drug pricing deal struck late last year, under which a U.K. health agency agreed to raise cost-effectiveness thresholds for NHS reimbursement.
- Enhertu, an antibody-drug conjugate, was previously available in England only to patients with HER2-positive cancers — not the broader low-HER2 group now covered.
- Scotland has covered Enhertu since 2023, and AstraZeneca says the drug is already paid for in 26 other European countries, making England a late mover.
- The NHS framed the move as a direct outcome of the bilateral pricing pact, signaling that future U.K. coverage decisions may hinge on similar threshold adjustments.
Why it matters: Roughly 1,000 metastatic breast cancer patients in England with low HER2 levels gain access to a drug Scotland and 26 European countries already fund — closing a multi-year access gap. The real lever isn't the drug itself but the late-2024 U.S.-U.K. pricing deal: by raising cost-effectiveness thresholds, it converted previously unaffordable medicines like Enhertu into NHS-eligible treatments, setting a template for how future coverage disputes get resolved.
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