[Christine MH-UK]

You might try talking to Cancer Baccup to see if they have any advice on getting cancer drugs on what is called a named patient basis. After hearing that the saintly Jane Tomlinson couldn't get Tykerb I was disgusted enough to do some checking and it seems like Tykerb has not yet received its EMEA licence yet and since new drug introduction is very slow and methodical in Britain, NICE as of July hadn't even set a time to begin the evaluation process. But I once met a cancer patient who had Iressa on a named patient basis and Iressa never received EMEA approval, so this might be a possibility [The patient was a non-smoking lung cancer patient and I think that Iressa had problems because of side effects and because the retrospective results showed that only never smokers and perhaps Asians benefitted and the trial wasn't set up right to deal with this]. The EMEA received the tykerb application nearly a year ago, so it should get its thumb out.

This whole issue is likely to heat up now that the Tomlinson family is raising the issue.

I know that some oncologists are using carboplatin for mets, but HCT isn't used much because the regime wasn't licenced (this is one of the big differences with the US, where drugs are licenced but can be much more freely used in different combinations afterwards).

Best of luck,

Christine