New cancer drugs on NHS offer hope to 4,500 patients

FOUR new potentially life-saving cancer treatments will be made available to patients immediately, the NHS has announced.

They will be available under the Cancer Drugs Fund – which had been closed amid fears that spiralling costs made it unsustainable, but has now been revamped.

The fund fast-tracks cancer drugs that are not yet routinely available to patients on the NHS, but which show potential.

NHS England said the new treatments will benefit 4,500 patients and that the changes to the fund mean patients can get them up to four months sooner.

The treatments are lung cancer drug ceritinib, a combination therapy of dabrafenib and trametinib for skin cancer, a medicine containing ipilimumab and nivolumab, also for skin cancer, and a combination of trifluridine and tipiracil for bowel cancer.

The new CDF has a fixed budget of £340million – and if costs go over that, drugs companies will pick up the bill. The NHS said it will work with pharmaceutical firms ‘to encourage the responsible pricing of cancer drugs’.

Dr Jonathan Fielden, of NHS England, said: ‘The new Cancer Drugs Fund is open for business, with four new treatments to be made immediately available. The new approach is faster and less rigid, meaning patients will be able to access promising new and innovative treatments much earlier.’

But Baroness Morgan, chief executive of charity Breast Cancer Now, said drugs rationing body Nice has had flawed methods for assessing cancer drugs before, adding: ‘The new CDF will do next to nothing to solve the wider problems preventing patients from accessing the best cancer drugs.’