Patients with an aggressive form of leukaemia will be able to receive a new cell therapy on the NHS that saw over three quarters of patients go into remission in trials.
The CAR T-cell therapy – known as ‘obe-cel’ – involves taking a patient's stem cells and reprogramming them in a lab to identify and target their cancer, before returning them to the body as ‘living medicine’.
The treatment will be available to people aged 26 and over living with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia which has returned or not responded to previous treatment, following approval from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Eligible patients will receive two doses of the CAR-T therapy intravenously, ten days apart, with the treatment being delivered at selected specialist CAR-T centres across the country.
It is estimated that is could be administered to around 50 patients each year in England.
In a clinical trial, 77% of patients saw their cancer enter remission after treatment with obe-cel, with half of those showing no signs of detectable cancer after three and a half years. On average, the treatment gave patients 15.6 additional months of life.
The treatment – which has been researched, developed and manufactured in the UK – was also found to have lower toxicity and was less likely to cause serious side effects than other CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapies.
Henny Braund, chief executive of Anthony Nolan, said: “B-cell ALL is an aggressive disease with a poor prognosis, and there remains a need for additional treatment options. Today's announcement, which enables access to an innovative new CAR-T therapy, marks a significant step for patients with B-cell ALL in England and Wales.
"Anthony Nolan, together with our partners Leukaemia Care and Leukaemia UK, welcomes this progress and looks forward to working with the NHS to help make obe-cel available to adult relapsed or refractory B-cell ALL patients in due course.”
Harry, a 19-year-old student from Harrogate, was treated with obe-cel for B-cell ALL as part of a clinical trial in 2024.
Harry Brown, who received obe-cel when he was 17, said: “I feel so lucky to have had access to such a wonderous treatment. Not only did it work better than my doctors thought it would, it worked without many of the horrible side effects you can get from other treatments.
"I think it’s brilliant obe-cel is now available on the NHS for people over the age of 26. The biggest thing it offers is hope. When you’re facing a situation like mine, hope is the most valuable thing you can have.”
Obe-cel is the latest personalised CAR-T therapy offered by the NHS in England since it was the first health system in Europe to offer CAR-T in 2018. The NHS now offers a range of CAR-T treatments for different forms of blood cancers to treat adults and children.
Anthony Nolan has supported the implementation of many of these CAR-T therapies, as part of its mission to save lives through stem cells.
The charity also campaigns for access to innovative new cell therapies to be made equitable for all patients. Its cell therapy roadmap, published last year, outlines how Government can unlock the power of cell therapies through investment in the specialist cell therapy workforce, a national fund to help CAR-T patients with travel costs to specialist treatment centres, and the provision of more psychological support for patients going through treatment.
Earlier this year, Anthony Nolan’s dedicated Cell Collection Centre welcomed its first donors. As well as helping make sure lifesaving stem cells reach patients in need of a transplant faster, the centre will support research and development for new cell therapies like CAR-T.
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