England Is Rolling Out First-Of-Its-Kind 7-Minute Cancer Treatment Injection

The state-funded national health service (NHS) in Britain will be the first in the world to offer an injection to treat cancer to hundreds of patients in England which is expected to cut treatment times by up to three quarters, reported Reuters.

NHS England on Tuesday said that hundreds of eligible patients treated with immunotherapy, atezolizumab, were set to have “under the skin” injection, which will free up more time for cancer teams, after it received approbal from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Dr Alexander Martin, a consultant oncologist at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said, “This approval will not only allow us to deliver convenient and faster care for our patients, but will enable our teams to treat more patients throughout the day.”

NHS England has said that atezolizumab, also called Tecentriq, is usually given to patients intravenously, directly into their veins via a drip, which could take around 30 minutes or up to an hour for some patients when it can be difficult to access a vein.

Marius Scholtz, Medical Director at Roche Products Limited told Reuters, “It takes approximately seven minutes, compared with 30 to 60 minutes for the current method of an intravenous infusion.”

Atezolizumab, which is made by Genentech, a Roche (ROG.S) company, is an immunotherapy drug that empowers a patient’s own immune system to seek and destroy cancerous cells. The treatment is currently offered by transfusion to NHS patients with a range of cancers, including ling, breast, liver and bladder.

It is expected that the majority of around 3,600 patients starting the treatment of atezolizumab every year in England to switch onto the time-saving injection, NHS England said.

However, it added that the patients receiving intravenous chemotherapy combined with atezolizumab may remain on the transfusion.