Life-extending Metastatic Breast Cancer Treatment Now Available in the Republic of Ireland

Life-extending Metastatic Breast CancerLife-extending Metastatic Breast Cancer Treatment Now Available in the Republic of Ireland PR Newswire HATFIELD, England, January 6, 2014 ®Halaven (eribulin) has today received reimbursement approval in the Republic of Ireland as a treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have progressed after at least two chemotherapeutic regimens for advanced disease. Prior therapy should have included two common types of chemotherapy, an anthracycline and a [1]taxane, unless patients were not suitable for these treatments. Eribulin is the first, single-agent chemotherapy to demonstrate a prolonged overall survival benefit for metastatic breast cancer patients within this setting [2]compared to other available single agent treatments. "I am pleased that eribulin will be available to Irish public patients with advanced breast cancer," says Professor John Crown, Consultant Medical Oncologist at St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. "It is active and offers the prospect of additional precious months of disease control to these women." Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer amongst Irish [3]women. One in ten women in Ireland will develop breast cancer and more [3]than 2,600 new cases are diagnosed each year. In almost ten percent of [4]cases, breast cancer is metastatic at diagnosis with a five-year survival [5]rate of only 21 percent.