Daratumumab approved for use in England and Wales

On 17 January 2018, it was announced that daratumumab will now be available in the form of a monotherapy on the NHS, for the treatment of patients with Multiple Myeloma (MM) in England and Wales. This approval was granted by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) and follows the decision granted by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) in October – see previous MM Hub article.

The therapy has been made available through the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), which provides faster access to the most promising cancer treatments, and will now allow access to MM patients that have received three prior lines of therapy that included a proteasome inhibitor (PI) and an immunomodulatory agent (IMiD) and have experienced disease progression during their last therapy. Access to such a novel therapy that has shown far-reaching benefits will be extremely welcome news for MM patients in England and Wales, although the limited indication as only a fourth line treatment is not quite what was hoped for and patient groups will certainly campaign for its extended use.