LONDON — U.K. health officials on Friday said they had reopened a review of two new Alzheimer’s therapies after previously finding they did not provide good therapeutic value for how much they cost.
The two drugs, Eli Lilly’s Kisunla and Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi, won regulatory authorization in the U.K. in 2024. But the country’s cost-effectiveness agency, which must approve drugs as well if they’re going to be covered in the National Health Service, determined that the price of the medicines, as well as the accompanying costs of providing them, outstripped the limited benefits they offered for patients. The agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, reiterated its findings last year.
But the drugmakers behind the two therapies appealed NICE’s decisions, moves that ultimately proved successful. NICE on Friday said it would take another look at the drugs.
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