Nice claimed there was “uncertainty” about the benefits of erlotinib, manufactured by Roche under the brand name Tarceva, and that it did not provide “value for money”. But a paper published online by The Lancet Oncology on Friday claims that patients who took the drug had 13.1 months of Progression Free Survival (time without tumours spreading) compared with 4.6 months for those who only had chemotherapy. Researchers at Tongji University in China – who studied 165 patients in a clinical trial - also claim there were fewer side-effects among those with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common form of the deadly disease, who had a type of gene mutation known as EGFR.
