Rarer Cancers Forum Pleads With NICE to Fund Liver Cancer Patients With Their Only Survival Option

LONDON, February 26, 2010 - NICE will convene today after two years of delays, to exercise their
final opportunity to reverse the fate of thousands of UK advanced primary
liver cancer patients who were told in November that they will be denied
their only survival option, Nexavar(R) (sorafenib) on the NHS. As the NICE
panel convenes to hear the appeal from the drug manufacturer (Bayer Schering
Pharma), RCF pleads with NICE to re-consider the evidence in favour of the
drug, in order to avoid leaving thousands of UK patients with no treatment
option at all and no hope as the process reaches its final stage.

Andrew Wilson-Webb, Chief Executive of the RCF said: "What happened to
the recommendations from the Richards Review in November 2009 and the new End
of Life policy from NICE? These policies were specifically designed to help
patients with rarer cancer such as Liver to access new treatments for a
previously untreatable disease. We can only hope that NICE take this final
opportunity to allow advanced liver cancer patients the chance they deserve
to potentially benefit from this drug."

Liver Cancer cases have more than tripled in the last 30 years from 865
cases in 1975 to more than 3100 in 2006, but because HCC is symptom silent,
most of the time people go untreated until it's too late for surgery. For
such patients, Nexavar is the only option. Currently, the UK is the only
country in the western world to refuse patients access to Nexavar, despite it
being widely available for both kidney and liver cancer in the US and every
single other country it is licensed in, from Germany and France to Poland and
Romania.

Andrew concludes "Sadly, although NICE was established to ensure that
effective, innovative drugs are funded by the NHS, it seems to have instead
become a gatekeeper to protect the NHS budget and people with the rarer
cancers in particular, seem to be losing out. One has to question how many
lives could have been saved in the two years NICE took to assess the
treatment and how much financial waste was incurred during this time, that
could have been used to fund patients with sorafenib (Nexavar). The larger
question is of course what kind of impact such decisions by NICE will have on
the future of medical science in the UK?"

About the Rarer Cancers Forum

The Rarer Cancers Forum is a unique charity which directly supports
patients who have a rarer cancer with bespoke information, and provides more
general education materials. The charity works to educate health
professionals about rarer cancers and to improve the services for those with
rarer cancers by working directly with Government, NICE and the Department of
Health. Rarer Cancers Forum is the only in the UK solely concerned with
looking after this large group of patients who may have one of 176 different
tumour types, all classified as less common cancers.

Contact for further information: Andrew Wilson-Webb, Chief Executive, Rarer Cancers Forum, Tel: +44(0)1227-738279, Mob: +44(0)7973118290