Cure for leukaemia that costs £370,000

A REVOLUTIONARY treatment that can cure children of leukaemia will cost £370,000 per dose, a drugs company has announced.

Health officials in the US yesterday granted a medical licence for the Kymriah treatment, and its manufacturer Novartis said it would apply for a similar licence in Europe.

But experts said it was unlikely the £368,500 drug, which alters a patient’s white blood cells to help the immune system fight leukaemia, would ever be approved on the NHS.

Novartis head Bruno Strigini justified the price, saying: ‘We looked at many factors including the medical and clinical value.’

The gene-editing treatment has cured patients in trials who had been given weeks to live. Scott Gottlieb, head of US drugs regulator the FDA, said: ‘We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation.’

But Professor Alan Melcher, of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said: ‘The cost is really important, particularly in the context of a publicly-funded health service. Hopefully in time the price will come down.’