NHS England and Gilead Sciences strike deal to offer patients cancer immunotherapy

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have given the go ahead for ground breaking new therapy Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) to be made available to cancer patients who have stopped responding to treatment.

Yescarta, a chimeric antigen receptor T Cell (CAR-T) is a new generation of personalised immunotherapies that works by using a patient’s own immune cells to target their cancer. Clinical trials have shown that this type of treatment has the potential to cure 40% of patients.

The drug will be made available through England’s Drug Cancer Fund following a deal with Gilead Sciences.
“This therapy is one of the most promising new treatments and it’s great that NHS patients will be among the first in the world to benefit.” said chief executive of NHS England Simon Stevens. “Thanks to this investment, the NHS is able to be at the forefront of providing a new wave of treatments that can be tailored to patients.”

The drug will be available at hospitals in Birmingham, Bristol, London, Newcastle and Manchester in the next few weeks, where it will be offered to up to 200 patients per year.