Game-changing cancer therapy treatment in England

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has announced that adult cancer patients in England will receive a new game-changing therapy treatment.

Under the first negotiated deal of its kind struck in Europe, adult NHS patients will have access to CAR-T after NHS England agreed to make CAR-T available for children and young people with a rare form of leukaemia last month.

The CAR-T therapy works by re-programming the patient’s own immune system to target their cancer. CAR-T cell treatments mark the beginning of a new era of personalised medicine, and form part of the NHS’s long term plan to upgrade cancer services. Trials indicate that the therapy could potentially cure 40 per cent of patients.

Up to 200 patients a year will receive the treatment after NHS England negotiated a confidential deal with the manufacturer Gilead Sciences. The treatment would have cost nearly £300,000 per patient at its full list price, but the company’s commercial agreement with NHS England has enabled NICE to approve its entry into NHS England’s Cancer Drugs Fund.

The first wave of NHS hospitals working towards providing the treatments are in: Birmingham, Bristol, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

Stevens said: “Thanks to investment in game-changing techniques like CAR-T, the NHS is at the forefront of providing a new wave of personalised treatments that are individually tailored to patients. CAR-T cell therapy is one of the most promising new treatments in a generation for lymphoma and leukaemia, and NHS patients will now be among the first in the world to benefit.

“The NHS has world leading clinicians, researchers and scientists, and today’s announcement is proof-positive that we are open to constructive and flexible partnerships with industry that rapidly bring life sciences innovation to NHS patients in a way that is also fair to British taxpayers.”