Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada (BMS) and the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA) have signed an agreement for immuno-oncology treatment OPDIVO.
The agreement has been signed for Canadian patients with metastatic melanoma, locally advanced or metastatic pre-treated non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and advanced or metastatic pre-treated renal cell carcinoma (RCC), and follows a positive recommendation by the Pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review (pCODR).
The agreement is aligned with the pCODR recommendation for the three tumours and will help ensure consistent patient access across the country.
BMS will implement the agreement into its own publicly funded system by working with each provincial, federal and territorial jurisdiction to make Opdivo accessible to eligible patients.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada president and general manager Dr Nawal Peacock said: “At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we are proud to be part of an innovation that has the potential to change survival expectations for patients across multiple tumour types.”
The company provided more than 3,000 patients in Canada with the treatment free-of-charge through different access programmes to help people living with advanced cancer benefit from Opdivo.
McMaster University Oncology professor Dr Rosalyn Juergens said: “Establishing access to new medicines for Canadian cancer patients is critical to advance the standard of cancer care and improve the survival rates of this devastating disease.
“Immuno-oncology treatments, like Opdivo, have been shown in clinical trials to improve survival in several types of cancer with generally fewer and less severe side effects.”
The programmed death-1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo has been designed to harness the body’s own immune system to help restore anti-tumour immune response.
It is currently approved in more than 60 countries, including Canada, the US, the European Union and Japan.