Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine

Cheaper blindness drug to get blessing from UK authorities?

British officials are one step closer to recommending the off-label use of the cancer drug Avastin to treat wet macular degeneration (wet MD), the most common cause of blindness, reports The Guardian.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the regulatory board which determines which drugs doctors can prescribe patients covered by UK’s National Health Service, will consider whether or not to approve the use of Avastin for the disease provided the safety and efficacy of the drug can be evaluated.

This decision comes at the heels of a recent study, published in the journal Eye, in which Avastin was found to be just as effective as the much more expensive drug Lucentis, which is currently approved to treat wet MD.

Genentech, which manufactures Lucentis and Avastin, however, continues to fight against its off-label use, refusing to assist in the necessary safety studies needed to give Avastin the green light.

To find out more about the controversy behind Avastin and its growing use to treat wet MD, read our story on treatment options for a related eye disease.

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