New Breast Cancer Wonder Drug Would Be Life-Changing For NZ Women

New Zealand women with an aggressive form of incurable breast cancer will be given a better chance to spend more precious time with their loved ones, now that Pharmac has announced it intends to fund Enhertu for HER2-positive advanced breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Foundation NZ has been campaigning for Enhertu (also called trastuzumab deruxtecan or T-Dxd) to be publicly funded because of its dramatic potential to keep patients alive for longer. The drug has shown unprecedented results in clinical trials – it reduced the risk of death by almost a third and boosted the time the cancer was held at bay from seven months to over two years.

Ah-Leen Rayner, chief executive of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, says: “The availability of Enhertu is going to be life-changing for our women. Our country’s top breast cancer specialists declared Enhertu to be one of the top three priorities for unfunded drugs in New Zealand and the clinical trials for it have generated a level of excitement not seen in breast cancer since the emergence of Herceptin 20 years ago.

“We’re pleased Pharmac has worked at speed to approve a second breast cancer drug from its budget boost in June. Ground-breaking treatments like Enhertu can stop lives being cut short and if we can keep increasing access to new medicines like this, New Zealand can catch up with the rest of the world. Having more investment for medicines and faster approvals processes is what women with breast cancer need more of.”

Enhertu is being heralded as the new breast cancer wonder drug. Trials of the drug showed patients had their risk of death reduced by 27% and were given 29 months of progression free survival (i.e. the length of time their cancer didn’t get worse) compared to 7.2 months on Kadcyla (the current second-line treatment for this type of breast cancer). Enhertu has become the standard of care internationally as the second-line treatment for HER2-positive advanced breast cancer. It has been funded in the UK since 2021 and Australia since last November.

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