UK Association Hails Pharma's R&D Role in Breast Cancer

UK drug industry association ABPI has published a report hailing the pharmaceutical industry's role in developing new compounds to treat key cancers, in particular breast cancer. The UK's cancer R&D spending is estimated at well over US$5bn annually.

UK government health provider the NHS spends roughly US$3.6bn per year on treating cancers of all types; of this total, hospitals account for 86% and dispensers some 12%. The study notes that approximately 400 compounds to treat cancer are currently under development, with some 50 targeting breast cancer, and a breakthrough could result in substantial savings for the NHS.

Although the ABPI highlights the fact that the UK's take-up of novel drugs such as Roche and Genentech's Herceptin (trastuzumab) is well below the average in most Western European countries, breast cancer survival rates have nevertheless improved markedly. Better screening has pushed five-year survival rates to more than 80% since 2001, but the disease still kills 13,000 women in the UK each year.