Nearly 100,000 cancer patients have now had fast-track access to newly approved NHS drugs – with one teen saying his treatment felt like being on a “slope going up”.
Yuvan Thakkar, 16, was the first NHS patient to receive a therapy that uses the body’s own cells to fight cancer.
He was diagnosed with a form of leukaemia aged six and received the pioneering treatment at Great Ormand Street Hospital.
The CAR-T therapy, called tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), involved removing his immune cells and modifying them to recognise and destroy cancer cells, before reintroducing them to the body.
In April, the NHS will have helped 100,000 patients access new and innovative treatments over eight years.
It’s been made possible by the NHS Cancer Drugs Fund – set up in 2016 to give patients faster access to new treatments.
The fund benefits people with common cancers, such as breast, lung, colorectal and prostate; as well as those with less common ones such as ovarian, cervical, kidney, and leukaemia – and also rare cancers including thyroid and biliary tract.
NHS England said patients get access to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) approved treatments six months faster, and all cancer treatments are funded as soon as they are approved.
For Yuvan, who spent his childhood in hospital fighting leukaemia, faster access to the CAR-T therapy means he is now able to sit his GCSEs.
Recounting his treatment, he said: “I remember receiving the cells for a bit. I was feeling quite down” – before being sent to intensive care “where I couldn’t do basic counting and things like that”…
