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Breast Cancer: HER2

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health (Patricia Hewitt) has made the following Written Statement. On 12 June 2006 (Official Report, cols. 47-48WS) I updated the House on Herceptin, following the announcement of its licence for early breast cancer and the publication of the draft recommendations of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) on its use. In that Written Statement, I promised to update the House on progress with introducing HER2 testing arrangements across the country. This Statement provides that update. In October 2005, Professor Mike Richards, the National Cancer Director, wrote to all cancer networks to identify the current level of HER2 testing and to inform them that they would need to put arrangements in place to ensure that patients who may benefit from Herceptin for early breast cancer could be identified. This exercise confirmed that access to HER2 testing facilities was patchy and few networks were testing all women with early breast cancer to determine their HER2 status. This was unsurprising given that Herceptin was not then licensed for early breast cancer. In March 2006, the National Cancer Director sought a progress report from cancer networks. This has shown that there has been a significant improvement in the number of cancer networks providing HER2 testing for all women diagnosed with early breast cancer. Twenty eight out of 34 cancer networks are now reporting that they HER2 test all women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. Of the remaining six, two (Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, and Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire) report that they will be testing all these women by July/August 2006; and four, (Derby and Burton, Mount Vernon, Peninsula and Thames Valley) report that they will be testing all these women by September/October 2006.