The Unicorn Foundation, as the peak organisation for neuroendocrine patients in Australia is committed to promoting and lobbying for equitable and timely access to medicines and treatments.
In recent months, the Unicorn Foundation's Dr John Leyden has been involved in lobbying the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) and Federal Politicians of the need for sunitinib to be subsidised for the treatment of metastatic pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer. Sutent (sunitinib) has been shown to nearly double the progression free survival (PFS 11 months vs 5months) compared with placebo and in about 10% of patients their tumours shrank in size.
Our efforts were successful with sutent being placed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in late August. This is an extremely pleasing result which benefits our Australian patients by allowing our NET specialists the ability to better manage their disease and prolong life.
The Unicorn Foundation thanks the efforts of the PBAC and the Hon Peter Dutton for endorsing this listing which will potentially save our pNET patients millions of dollars a year.
