Gastrointestinal Cancer: Drugs

(asked on 19th January 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what evidence there is that regorafenib is not effective for the third line of treatment for patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumours.


Answered by
Earl Howe Portrait
Earl Howe
Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
This question was answered on 2nd February 2015

The Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) panel considered the use of regorafenib after two previous tyrosine kinase inhibitors in non-resectable or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumours to offer sufficient clinical benefit to potentially remain included in the CDF.

However the CDF panel noted that although the patient numbers treated with regorafenib for gastrointestinal stromal tumours were small (less than 100 per year), regorafenib had a European approved indication in the treatment of bowel cancer, a much more common cancer. The panel therefore noted that regorafenib had a potential funding stream from its licensed use in bowel cancer and thus did not fulfil the condition for use of the scoring system for very rare indications.

Reticulating Splines