NICE Endorses Novartis Heart Drug for Some Heart Failure Patients
Novartis’s big new promising drug Entresto has been recommended for use in some patients with heart failure by NICE, which stated on Friday it believed the treatment was a cost-effective option.
Entresto has a list price of £1,194 a year in Britain, which is less than half the price of $4,560 charged by Novartis in the US.
U.S. prices for medicines are often considerably higher than those in Europe and a Novartis spokesman said European pricing was determined according to local conditions.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence stated Entresto was suitable for a subset of heart failure patients whose hearts were particularly poor at pumping blood.
Novartis welcomed the provisional recommendation, however the Swiss drugmaker said it was disappointed that NICE planned to restrict the drug’s use to only certain patients.
NICE also gave a green light to AstraZeneca’s ovarian cancer drug Lynparza, as well as Astellas Pharma’s Xtandi for treating prostate cancer patients before chemotherapy. Although it turned down Johnson & Johnson’s Zytiga for the same use in prostate cancer.