Hundreds of people with aggressive blood cancer will be offered a groundbreaking one-off personalised therapy that reprogrammes their immune system to fight the disease.
The treatment has a list price of £279,000 per patient but has been approved for NHS use after Bristol Myers Squibb agreed a confidential discount.
It is a form of CAR-T therapy, a cutting-edge technique which involves modifying a patient’s immune cells in a laboratory.
Once their T-cells have been engineered to seek and destroy cancer cells, they are infused back into the patient’s body.
Almost 600 patients a year with large B-cell lymphoma that has either returned or not responded to standard treatments are expected to be eligible.
Clinical trials have showed that patients who had the treatment, known as liso-cel, lived on average twice as long before their disease worsened than those given standard care.
Helen Knight, director of medicines evaluation at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, said: « For people living with this aggressive blood cancer, and their families, today’s announcement offers real hope.
“These aren’t just statistics – each person who will benefit from this treatment is someone’s parent, child, partner or friend.
« The evidence we’ve seen shows remarkable results. Liso-cel can buy precious time before further treatment is needed and could even be given as an outpatient treatment, reducing time spent in hospital.”
Around 4,300 people are diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma each year in England and most are over 65.
Most are cured with first-line chemotherapy but 10-15% do not respond to initial treatment and 20-30% later relapse.
Professor Peter Johnson, NHS national director for cancer, said: « It is excellent to have another CAR-T treatment available for patients who have large B-cell lymphoma which is not responding to treatment or where the disease returns early on.
“This means we now have four CAR-T products across five clinical indications, and more than 1,500 people have benefitted from these treatments on the NHS at a price affordable to taxpayers.
“The NHS remains dedicated to funding the best cancer care and it is fantastic we can offer treatments like this to hundreds more patients with advanced blood cancers, giving them real hope of a longer and better quality of life.”
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