Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of medicines approved for the treatment of brain tumours in the last 10 years; and what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the approvals process for medicines for brain tumours.

The Government recognises how difficult a diagnosis of a cancerous brain tumour can be for patients, carers, and families, and that treatment options remain limited. All new licensed medicines, including those for brain cancer, are assessed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). NICE advises the National Health Service on whether a medicine is effective and represents good value for NHS resources.

All three medicines that NICE has evaluated for the treatment of brain tumours in the last 10 years have been recommended for use on the NHS. These are, carmustine implants and temozolomide for the treatment of newly diagnosed high-grade glioma, dabrafenib with trametinib for treating BRAF V600E mutation-positive glioma in children and young people aged one year old and over, and vorasidenib for treating astrocytoma or oligodendroglioma with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations after surgery in people 12 years old and over.

Recently, the increase to the cost-effectiveness threshold that NICE uses, announced in April as part of the United States and United Kingdom partnership, has enabled NICE to recommend vorasidenib for eligible patients with IDH mutant low grade glioma as an option to treat grade 2 astrocytoma or oligodendroglioma in eligible patients aged 12 years old and over, if it is considered the most suitable treatment option.