Potential new treatments for brain cancer are being hampered by the failure of pharmaceutical companies to supply the drugs needed for research and by regulatory delays, a leading cancer charity has warned.
Brain tumors kill more children and adults under 40 in the UK than any other cancer, but research has been underfunded for years. Around 12,000 are diagnosed with a primary brain tumor in the UK each year.
Brain tumor research is concerned by reports from senior clinicians of a reluctance to provide the expensive drugs needed for research because brain cancer is a rare condition.
The charity’s Hugh Adams said the delivery of new drugs was “suffocated” by a lack of research capacity and challenges in obtaining drugs for trials. He said: “We need a new framework that treats this disease as a clinical priority.”
Siobhain McDonagh, a Labor MP, was push for a law to support brain tumor research after her sister Baroness McDonagh, the former Labor secretary-general, died of a glioblastoma brain tumor last June. McDonagh will introduce a bill to parliament this month, calling on MPs to back measures to increase the number of clinical trials.
She wants to see the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the National Institute for Care and Excellence fast-track applications for the approval of treatments for rarer cancers. She also wants new regulations requiring drug companies to provide a stockpile of drugs to treat brain tumors. “We want to put pressure on the pharmaceutical firms to provide the drugs so they can be tested,” she said. She said companies are reluctant to supply the drugs because they are not financially viable or they are concerned about the risk of adverse results.
Paul Mulholland, a consultant in medical oncology, gave evidence to the parliamentary health and social care committee last month about the difficulties in obtaining drugs for glioblastoma tumor trials. Some of these drugs may be treatments for other cancers that may have the potential to be repurposed for brain cancer.
“There has been no improvement in treatment for 30 years,” he said. “The key problem … is that we are not doing enough clinical trials. The pharmaceutical industry did not provide the drugs to conduct these trials and was not interested in the patient group. As such, we need regulatory change to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to invest in finding a cure.”
In May 2018, the government announced £40 million for brain tumor research, but an all-party parliamentary group on brain tumors report in February last year found just £15 million was awardedwith “£6 million of this not easily identifiable as relevant to brain tumours”.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Brain cancer is a devastating disease, which is why we have made £40m available for research projects specifically looking for new treatments and therapies to tackle this disease. “
Amit Aggarwal, executive director of medical affairs at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), said: “Pharmaceutical companies exist to find, develop and deliver effective treatments for patients and they already provide medicines for external clinical trials for new uses voluntarily, including for brain cancer.
“Forcing companies to release their products for every request can undermine public confidence in medicines if, for example, a medicine doesn’t work for a new use, or worse, something goes wrong in a clinical trial in which the original company had no involvement.”
