Thousands of patients will benefit from a new cancer jab for more than a dozen types of the disease, with the NHS being the first in Europe to offer this new injection.
The health service is introducing an injectable form of immunotherapy, nivolumab, allowing patients to receive their fortnightly or monthly treatment in just 5 minutes instead of up to an hour via an IV drip.
This rollout will save over a year’s worth of treatment time for patients and NHS teams annually, enabling patients to spend less time in hospital while freeing up staff capacity to deliver more appointments and treatments. The new jab can be used to treat 15 cancer types, including skin cancer, bladder, and oesophagus, with an estimated 1,200 patients in England per month expected to benefit.
Following approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), clinical trials showed high patient satisfaction with the under-the-skin injection, which takes 3-5 minutes to administer. Patients preferred it to the IV form of the drug, which takes 30 to 60 minutes every 2 or 4 weeks, depending on the cancer type.
NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Cancer, Professor Peter Johnson, commented:
“Immunotherapy has already been a huge step forward for many NHS patients with cancer, and being able to offer it as an injection in minutes means we can make the process far more convenient.
“This treatment is used for 15 different types of the disease, so it will free up thousands of valuable clinicians’ time every year, allowing teams to treat even more patients and helping hospital capacity.
“And this is just the latest development in the NHS’s ongoing commitment to provide patients with the latest cancer therapies and treatment options that truly transform lives”.
Around 2 in 5 patients currently receiving IV nivolumab should be eligible for the new jab. NHS staff administering the jab could save around 1,000 hours of treatment time for patients and clinicians every month, equivalent to more than 1 full year of time annually. Most eligible new patients are expected to begin on the injectable form of nivolumab.
NHS cancer services will prepare to treat the first patients with the new treatment next month when supplies are received in the UK, freeing up valuable resources in nursing and pharmacy teams and helping with capacity demands in cancer day units. This is the latest in a series of NHS cancer treatment innovations aimed at saving patients time and improving access, including new injections for breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and blood disorders.
The faster treatment comes at no extra cost to the NHS, thanks to an agreement negotiated by NHS England with the manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb. The rollout is part of NHS England’s 3-pillar approach to delivering the best value from medicines, combining cutting-edge innovations, smarter use of biosimilars and generics, and new treatments that free up clinical capacity and improve patient experience.
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