The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee has come out in favour of allowing latest gene panel testing methods to assess eligibility when prescribing targeted therapies for variants of NSCLC.

Its recommendation follows the MBS listing of next generation sequencing (NGS) gene panel testing for NSCLC last November.

In response, the committee considered a proposed change to the restriction criteria to amend testing requirements for identification of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) or c-ROS proto-oncogene 1 (ROS1) gene rearrangement in tumour material to include NGS sequencing for the cancers as an eligible testing method for PBS subsidy.

This would be in addition to the currently available  fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) testing, it heard at an intracycle meeting in December (link here).

Impacted therapies would be alectinib, brigatinib, ceritinib, crizotinib, entrectinib and lorlatinib (medicines that require evidence of the presence of ALK or ROS1 gene rearrangement).