NICE re­jects No­var­tis' mi­graine drug Aimovig, months af­ter de­clin­ing to en­dorse pricey Kym­ri­ah for adult use

No­var­tis $NVS is will­ing to play ball with UK’s cost-ef­fec­tive­ness watch­dog NICE, who re­ject­ed their mi­graine pre­ven­tion drug in a draft guid­ance on Thurs­day, months af­ter de­clin­ing to en­dorse the Swiss drug­mak­er’s cell ther­a­py Kym­ri­ah in adult lym­phoma pa­tients.

The drug, erenum­ab, is sold as Aimovig in the Unit­ed States by No­var­tis and part­ner Am­gen $AMGN. It forms part of a new crop of bi­o­log­ics tar­get­ing the CGRP pro­tein that trans­mits pain sig­nals in­to the brain, and is con­sid­ered in­stru­men­tal in gen­er­at­ing and main­tain­ing headaches as­so­ci­at­ed with mi­graine. Erenum­ab costs around £5,000 (about $6368) per year, ex­clud­ing a con­fi­den­tial dis­count that would have been grant­ed to Eng­land’s na­tion­al health ser­vice (NHS) had NICE rec­om­mend­ed the drug.

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