According to Prostate Cancer UK The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has released its second draft decision on the availability of radium-223 (Xofigo). Different from the original draft this draft recommends that radium-223 be made available on the NHS for men with advanced prostate cancer that no longer responds to hormone therapy (castrate resistant prostate cancer) that has also spread to the bones. However, they only recommend it for these men if they’ve already been treated with chemotherapy.
The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC), which operates independently of NICE, hasn’t yet considered radium-223 availability on the NHS in Scotland. So at the moment men north of the border still are not able to have this treatment.
Radium-223 is given by injections into the vein, where it travels in the blood system and then finds its way to the bones. It mimics calcium and is taken up by active bone cells and since the cancer cells are more active than regular bone cells the cancer cells are