UK's health regulator has extended Roche's Perjeta licence and doctors say that women with an aggressive form of breast cancer can benefit from the drug much earlier in their treatment.

Report showed that there are around 2,000 women in the UK with an aggressive form of breast cancer and the drug can now be administered at an early stage of treatment after the regulators extended the licence for the drug in the UK. The drug was earlier licensed for advanced HER2-positive breast cancer. The expanded licence allows doctors to use it in pre-surgery for locally advanced, inflammatory or early-stage disease at high risk of recurrence.

The approval for licence comes following two studies, including NEOSPHERE that showed that Perjeta regimen nearly doubled the number of women whose infections were completely eradicated compared to the current treatment and also showed that the patients were 40 per cent more likely to be disease-free after three years. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence had said that the drug is too expensive for routine NHS use is still available for patients with previously-untreated advanced disease through England's Cancer Drugs Fund.

Andrew Wardley, consultant in Medical Oncology at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust said, "There is a need to bring effective medicines to patients with cancer earlier. Perjeta has already shown the longest survival benefit in patients with previously untreated advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, so it is very encouraging to see its authorisation in an earlier setting in order to further improve the long-term outcomes for patients with this aggressive disease."