NHS officials have revealed that about 600 cancer patients in the region have been treated with new drugs since a special fund was set up by the Government a year ago.
Officials from the North of England Cancer Drug Approvals Group (NECDAG), which vets applications for funding from doctors, said the allocation was meeting the demand and no one had been turned down.
News of the impact the cancer drug fund is having on the region came as NECDAG announced that it was providing funding for six additional new cancer treatments.
In recent years, The Northern Echo has highlighted the plight of cancer patients who have had to fight to get access to new cancer drugs which are often widely available abroad, but not available on the NHS.
The Government’s response to the increasing demand was to set up the cancer drug fund to improve access to often expensive new treatments.
Three of the newly-approved drugs are being funded using this additional money.
These include Ipilimumab for malignant melanoma, Abiraterone with prednisone for advanced prostate cancer and Bevacizumab with capacitabine for breast cancer that has spread. Ipilimumab, which has been hailed as a breakthrough in the treatment of malignant melanoma, is believed to be the most expensive drug approved by the panel, costing £90,000 per patient, per year.
In August, Professor Ruth Plummer, a cancer specialist at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, who has been treating patients with this new drug as part of a clinical trial, said: “We haven’t had a new drug for melanoma for 30 years and this is the first time that a drug has shown a survival benefit for patients.”
The other new drugs approved by NECDAG include Folfirinox for advanced pancreatic cancer, Degarelix for advanced prostate cancer and Imatinib for patients who have been treated for stomach cancer to reduce the risk of the disease recurring.
These drugs will be paid for out of mainstream NHS funding because they are expected to be approved by the national drugs watchdog the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
So far, the North-East NHS had an interim allocation of £2.8m received last autumn, plus an additional £11.3m to spend on cancer drugs not funded by the NHS during 2011-12.
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