Breast cancer patient in Wales denied life-extending drug Enhertu

Her application for specialist funding from her local health board was rejected.

Swansea Bay University Health Board said it “carefully considers all requests for the funding of treatments that fall outside normal treatment protocols” and takes NICE recommendations into account.

It added: “We do not have unlimited resources to be able to agree to all requests and as a result we were unable to support this application on this occasion.”

In July, NICE decided not to recommend the drug, saying it would not be cost-effectand called on pharmaceutical companies to offer a fairer price.

Prof Arwyn Tomos Jones from Cardiff University’s School of Pharmacy said the process of producing the drug was costly.

“Enhertu is a really good example of what we would call a biological drug, and right from initial experiments in a laboratory through to the clinic, they are much more expensive,” he said.

“It’s a lot more costly, generally, than what you would class as a small molecule drug that you can chemically synthesise.”