New cancer drugs are on the market only eight months later in Europe than in the United States, it reports AD Tuesday in response to a study by Professor Carin Uyl-de Groot of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The delay would lead to an earlier and unnecessary death of people here.
A new cancer drug comes onto the market in Europe after an average of 403 days. In the US, this happens after an average of 161 days. European cancer patients thus have to wait an average of 242 days longer for life-saving drugs than patients in the US.
According to Uyl-de Groot, the delay can partly be explained by the fact that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is much slower with registering new medicines than the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is not clear why the procedure at the EMA takes so much longer. The many questions that the EMA poses to manufacturers could possibly contribute to this.
In addition, European member states must adopt the positive advice of the EMA before a medicine is placed on the market. In the Netherlands, the National Health Care Institute takes care of this. On average, such an approval takes 128 days.
In other countries this often happens faster. In Germany, medicines are approved on average 17 days after approval by the EMA. In the United Kingdom this takes an average of 22 days and in Austria an average of 31 days. It takes the longest in many Eastern European countries and Greece. On average, patients there have to wait two to three years before a drug is on the market.
‘Delayed approval led to a loss of 30,000 years of life’
Uyl-de Groot argues that the delay in approving medicines for melanoma and prostate cancer has already resulted in a loss of 30,000 years of life in Europe. In the Netherlands, almost 1,300 years of life would have been lost as a result.
The EMA says to it AD that they cannot respond to the study yet, because experts need more time to study the study. “Our main concern now is the COVID-19 pandemic,” the agency said.
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