Singer Yubin, formerly of Wonder Girls, has publicly shared her family’s battle with breast cancer, urging authorities to expand health insurance coverage for the anticancer drug Tukisa (active ingredient: Tucatinib).
On her social media platform on the 1st, Yubin revealed, “My older sister has been struggling with treatment since being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, and after the cancer metastasized to her brain last year, she endures a painful fight each day. We found an effective treatment, but due to enormous drug costs and other practical limitations, appropriate treatment has been difficult.”
Tukisa, developed by Seegene, is an oral therapy designed for HER2-positive breast cancer patients, a form of cancer where tumor cells overexpress the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes cancer cell growth. Existing antibody therapies such as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Perjeta (pertuzumab) inhibit HER2 but cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, leaving patients with brain metastases without effective treatment options.
Tukisa overcomes this limitation by penetrating the blood-brain barrier, proving effective in treating metastatic tumors in the brain. Clinical studies indicate that, when combined with existing therapies, Tukisa significantly improves overall survival and progression-free survival rates.
Although Tukisa received domestic approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in 2023 following a previous petition, health insurance coverage has not yet been applied. As a result, patients currently bear the full cost, which Yubin’s petition notes is approximately 30 million won every two months.
Yubin’s appeal underscores the urgent need to ease the financial burden on patients requiring this life-saving treatment, advocating for health insurance coverage to make Tukisa more accessible to those battling HER2-positive breast cancer with brain metastases.
Related topics:
