Brain Cancer: Medical Treatments

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has had no recent discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on the topic of OPTUNE, or Tumour Treating Fields.

NICE’s guideline on brain tumours published in 2018 recommends that Tumour Treating Fields should not be offered for the management of newly diagnosed glioblastoma or recurrent high-grade glioma, based on an assessment of the evidence available at the time.

Decisions on whether guidelines should be updated in light of new evidence are taken by the NICE prioritisation board, chaired by NICE’s Chief Medical Officer, in line with its published prioritisation framework. NICE’s prioritisation board considered Tumour Treating Fields for glioblastoma in July 2024 where they agreed the topic should not be prioritised but reconsidered when relevant key trials have completed.

At the meeting on 15 September 2025, the topic was reconsidered. The prioritisation board noted that some trials are ongoing, including a key trial that is likely to publish this year, and consequently agreed that the topic should still not be prioritised at this time, but revisited once those trials have published.