Women's legal bid for cancer drug

Velcade can prolong life for up to two years

Three cancer sufferers from West Yorkshire are planning a joint legal action to win access to a drug that may help treat the disease.

Velcade slows progression of myeloma - a cancer of bone marrow plasma cells.

But the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said more research into the drug was needed and it should not be used by the NHS.

Jacky Pickles, Janice Wrigglesworth and Marie Morton, all from Keighley, want to ensure they can get the drug.

Around 4,000 people are diagnosed with myeloma in the UK each year.

Velcade is the first new treatment for the cancer in more than 10 years and has been licensed for more than two years for patients who have relapsed.

The drug is available in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and throughout the rest of Europe.

It is allowing me to live and see the things I want to see. It gives me hope that I will live longer and see my 22-year-old son Sean settled Jacky Pickles

Nice, which regulates primary care trusts (PCTs) in England and Wales, is expected to stick to its ruling at a final appraisal committee meeting next week.

Mrs Pickles, 44, met Mrs Wrigglesworth, 59, and Mrs Morton, 57, while having cancer treatment.

She said: "We are looking into legal aid at the moment. We cannot afford to pay for this ourselves, but we cannot just sit and watch Nice take our future away.

"We will take this all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if we need to."

Mrs Pickles, a midwifery sister at Bradford Royal Infirmary, was diagnosed with the disease five years ago.

She has undergone chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and a course of thalidomide, the drug that caused birth defects in the 1960s, but which has been relaunched as a myeloma treatment.

'Life prolonged'

All worked for a while before her condition worsened again.

Last October she was put on a trial of Velcade and was apparently restored to normal.

"With myeloma there is no cure, we at best hope for a long plateau phase, but this drug gives us quality of life," she said.

"It is allowing me to live and see the things I want to see. It gives me hope that I will live longer and see my 22-year-old son Sean settled.

"We have to fight for this, because if we don't who will?"

Myeloma accounts for about 2% of all cancer cases in the UK, and has poor survival rates, with only 23% of patients living for more than five years after diagnosis.

The drug makers say Velcade can prolong life by 18 to 24 months. Treatment would cost about £18,000 per patient.

But Andrea Sutcliffe, the head of appraisal at NICE, said it had been decided that the drug's role in the treatment of multiple myeloma was "uncertain and needed to be established more clearly with more research" before it could be recommended for general use in the NHS.