NCCN Updates Antiemesis Guidelines

JENKINTOWN, Pa., January 8, 2007 —The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) is pleased to announce updates to the NCCN Antiemesis Guidelines. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™ are used extensively by managed care companies and by Medicare as the basis for coverage policies.

The guidelines have a new recommendation for breakthrough treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea/vomiting. Nabilone (Cesamet, Valeant) is now recommended for breakthrough treatment.

The guidelines table describing the emetogenic potential of different antineoplastic agents has been revised. Bortezomib (Velcade, Millennium), dasatinib (Sprycel, Bristol Myers-Squibb), decitabine (Dacogen, MGI Pharma), lenalidomide (Revlimid, Celgene), nelarabine (Arranon, GlaxoSmithKline), sorafenib (Nexavar, Bayer Pharmaceuticals), sunitinib (Sutent, Pfizer), thalidomide (Thalomid, Celgene), and trastuzumab (Herceptin, Genentech) are all now considered to have minimal emetic risk.

Metoclopramide (Reglan, Baxter) and diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Parke Davis) are no longer recommended for delayed emesis prevention for patients receiving moderate-emetic-risk chemotherapy.

NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in OncologyTM are developed and updated through a consensus-driven process with explicit review of the scientific evidence by multidisciplinary panels of expert physicians from NCCN member institutions. The most recent version of this and all the guidelines are available free of charge at www.nccn.org.