On 28 September the Prime Minister announced that an additional £400m investment in the Cancer Drugs Fund will allow thousands more cancer patients in England to gain access to life-extending drugs recommend by their clinicians and medical experts.
More than 34,000 patients have benefitted from the Cancer Drugs Fund since it was created in 2010. The Fund is now confirmed for an extra two years until March 2016. The extension will allow new patients to benefit and guarantee that those currently receiving drugs will continue to get them. The new money means the amount committed will top £1bn in total.
Dr Andrew Protheroe, Consultant in Medical Oncology at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford, said: “The more treatment options that are available to me, the better job I feel I can do for my patients. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing there is an effective, licensed, evidence-based treatment available which I am not allowed to use. It is like trying to do your job with one hand tied behind your back. Before the Cancer Drugs Fund, doctors were not able to use a whole range of drugs which were part of standard practice in other countries. This fantastic announcement means we won’t have to go back to those days. I will be able to continue to provide the best treatments possible for my patients.”
Mark Flannagan, chief executive of Beating Bowel Cancer, added: This announcement means that the NHS will continue to provide cancer patients with drugs that will help them to live a longer and better life. The introduction of the fund was a milestone in helping cancer patients to benefit from the best treatments in the world. Many more bowel cancer patients will now be given hope and peace of mind that these treatments will continue to be made available to them if recommended by their doctor.”
Alongside the plan to extend the fund, a cutting-edge project to map 100,000 genomes was given a boost with the announcement of a pioneering partnership between Cancer Research UK and Government-owned Genomics England, in line with David Cameron’s ambition for Britain to lead the world in unlocking the power of DNA data.
In order to understand which treatments and drugs will be effective, the whole DNA code of 3,000 cancer patients will be sequenced, as well as a further 3,000 whole DNA sequences for their cancer tumours.
Cancer Research UK and Genomics England’s partnership is part of the Government’s commitment to make Britain the first country in the world to sequence 100,000 genomes – or individual DNA codes – within five years.
Dr Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, commented: “Every patient deserves the best possible treatment for their cancer. New treatments targeting the genetic changes in cancer are being developed all the time, and the Cancer Drugs Fund is a vital way for patients to get them as soon as they’ve been properly tested and shown to work. Our partnership with Genomics England builds on our research testing genetic changes in tumours to understand cancer in all its intricate detail. This rapidly-changing research field lays the foundations for even faster progress, saving many more lives from this devastating disease.”