UK government invests in new radiotherapy treatment
pharmafile | April 16, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Cancer, Photon beam therapy, Proton beam therapy, prostate cancer, radiotherapy
The government is to invest £250 million in a cutting-edge radiotherapy treatment that should benefit 1,500 cancer patients in the UK each year.
The cash injection means that proton beam therapy will be available at the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Christie NHS Foundation Trust hospital in Manchester from 2017.
The treatment uses a high-energy beam of particles to destroy cancer cells and is particularly well suited to dealing with complex childhood cancers.
The government says a major benefit of the therapy, which can be closely targeted, is that it reduces side effects such as deafness, loss of IQ and secondary cancers that can result from traditional forms of cancer treatment.
Patients currently go abroad for such treatment and by 2014-15, the NHS estimates it will be spending £30 million a year sending up to 400 patients to Switzerland or the US.
The National Radiotherapy Advisory Group says this situation has led to “unacceptable inequalities” in access to the treatment.
The NRAG advised five years ago that there must be ‘at least one’ proton beam therapy facility in the UK – and the investment is required, it said, because the projected need for radiotherapy was significantly underestimated 15-20 years ago.
“Developing a national proton beam therapy service is vital to ensuring our cancer facilities are world class,” says health secretary Andrew Lansley.
A third UK site, University Hospitals Birmingham, is earmarked to build another proton beam facility should further capacity be needed.
Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said the news showed that UK radiotherapy services were improving.
“Proton beam therapy has important benefits over conventional radiotherapy for patients with several types of cancer, such as brain tumours in children,” he said.
Adrian Crellin, dean of clinical oncology at the Royal College of Radiologists, agreed. “Proton treatment will be of benefit to patients with certain rare cancers,” he said. “It will offer significantly better outcomes in curing cancer in children and some adult cancers of the skull and spine.”
But the British Medical Journal cast a more cautious note, highlighting the fact that proton beam therapy has not yet been the subject of a NICE technology appraisal.
“So it is not yet clear that its cost could not have achieved greater benefits if applied elsewhere in the NHS, either in cancer treatment or in other areas,” it pointed out.
Adam Hill
Related Content
Blue Earth announces first UK patient received prostate cancer injection
Blue Earth Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company specialising in targeted radiotherapeutics, has announced that the first …
Central nervous system cancer metastases – the evolution of diagnostics and treatment
The current forms of immunotherapy, how T cell therapy works and what the future holds
BioMed X and Servier launch Europe’s first XSeed Labs to advance AI-powered antibody design
BioMed X and Servier have announced the launch of Europe’s first XSeed Labs research project, …
