UK's NICE is­n't con­vinced by Mer­ck­'s Keytru­da in head and neck can­cer

There may be 33 new cas­es of head and neck can­cer in the Unit­ed King­dom each day, but the re­gion’s cost-ef­fec­tive­ness watch­dog NICE is not con­vinced by the da­ta sup­port­ing Mer­ck’s flag­ship im­munother­a­py Keytru­da in the pa­tient pop­u­la­tion.

On Wednes­day the agency said it was not rec­om­mend­ing Keytru­da for pa­tients with un­treat­ed metasta­t­ic or un­re­sectable re­cur­rent head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma (HN­SCC), cit­ing un­cer­tain­ty that the tri­al ev­i­dence sup­port­ing the drug does not re­flect the cur­rent treat­ment par­a­digm in Eng­land’s NHS.

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