BCAC urges you to sign this petition, lodged by Catherine Cooke, asking the government to fund Keytruda for early stage triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). We applied to Pharmac for funding of Keytruda for early and advanced TNBC in November 2022. In October 2024 Pharmac approved funding of this medicine for advanced TNBC, but not for early stage TNBC, even though this was recommended by their own clinical advisory committee in 2023. BCAC wrote to Pharmac in July 2024, citing research demonstrating Keytruda’s effectiveness against early stage TNBC and urging them to extend funding to those with this condition. The KEYNOTE-522 clinical trial has shown that this treatment will save lives. Keytruda is funded for early TNBC in more than 40 countries, including Australia, the UK and Canada.
Catherine was diagnosed with TNBC in 2024 and gave the following reasons for launching her petition: “By failing to fund Keytruda for early TNBC, we are:
• Allowing more people to progress to advanced, incurable cancer, which will cost even more to treat in the long run.
• Placing an unbearable financial burden on families already struggling in today’s tough economy.
• Ignoring the government’s stated commitment to prioritising mental health—this financial stress is driving some patients to despair with dire conversations happening.”
About 15% of all breast cancers are the triple negative subtype. Medicines that target hormone or HER2 receptors in other subtypes will not work against TNBC. Chemotherapy is currently the only publicly funded option available for these patients. Keytruda is an immunotherapy, shown to improve progression-free and overall survival for people with high-risk TNBC. You can read more about TNBC here.
You can read news coverage of Catherine's story here. She is also running a Pink Ribbon fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Foundation on 30 March 2025. Read more about this here.
