Our policy on cancer drugs

Cancer drugs play a crucial role in many patients’ treatment, offering promising improvements in survival and quality of life. There have been exciting advances in drug development over recent years, however translating these into routine access for patients in the NHS has sometimes difficult.

Ensuring people with cancer have swift access to the most innovative treatments is critical if we are to see outcomes improve. Our research has led to the development of more than 50 cancer drugs, which are being used to treat 3 in 4 people who receive cancer drugs on the NHS.

The landscape of cancer drug development has changed markedly over recent years, including an increased focus on targeted or ‘personalised’ treatments. While exciting, these new developments pose challenges to the standard processes for approving new cancer drugs.

Since Brexit, the UK's process for drug licensing has been managed by the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). New decisions taken for drugs as part of the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) centralised procedure will continue to apply in Northern Ireland. 

Our priority as the UK continues to develop its new relationship with the EU is to safeguard the interests of people affected by cancer and the research community. Once new treatments have gone through approval processes, they must be accessible to patients as soon as possible. New UK regulations around clinical trials and medicines access must be compatible enough with international standards to ensure the UK remains a desirable place for research collaboration, and for the pharmaceutical industry to launch new treatments. It is vital that the UK doesn't fall behind. We want to see quicker access to suitable medicines, and support innovative thinking to make that happen for people with cancer. For more information, please see our blog here.

Cancer drugs play a crucial role in many patients’ treatment, offering promising improvements in survival and quality of life. There have been exciting advances in drug development over recent years, however translating these into routine access for patients in the NHS is sometimes difficult. 

Ensuring people with cancer have timely access to the most innovative treatments is critical if we are to see outcomes improve. Our research has led to the development of more than 50 cancer drugs, with 8 in 10 people who receive cancer drugs on the NHS in the UK receiving a drug developed by us, or with us. 

The landscape of cancer drug development has changed markedly over recent years, including an increased focus on targeted or ‘personalised’ treatments. This comes as genomically enabled research evolves and the use of genomic testing becomes more mainstream along the cancer pathway. Now the use of precision medicines is becoming a reality. Precision and personalised approaches to treatment look at the molecular biology of an individual tumour. One way to do this is to accurately target drugs towards specific proteins or pathways in cancer cells based on tumour mutations. This not only improves patient outcomes but can minimise short- and long-term adverse side effects of cancer treatment and prevent over diagnosis. Our genomics policy work can be found here. 

 As new, proven drugs emerge it is our priority that they are rolled out effectively and equitably, so they are accessible to patients as soon as possible. At the moment there are lots of challenges to this as a drug moves from a clinical trial to evidence evaluation and approval, and then adoption in the NHS. The NHS works with approval bodies like the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) to try and mitigate these challenges. For example, the Cancer Drugs Fund has helped manage earlier patient access to new cancer drugs in England while more evidence is collected on their clinical effectiveness.  

In the longer term, we would like to see real-world evidence used to inform pricing decisions, through flexible pricing mechanisms such as outcomes-based pricing. High-quality, routinely-collected data will be central to the success of these initiatives. 

We continue to work with decision-makers and health bodies across the UK to ensure patient access to new medicines stays top of the policy agenda. 

Response to DHSC consultation on the future strategy for batch testing of medicinal products (July 2022)

Response to NHS England Commercial Framework consultation (January 2020)

Submission to the Scottish Health and Sport Committee medicines inquiry (November 2019)

Summary of CRUK-Greater Manchester outcome-based payment research (Phase 2) (March 2019)

Making Outcome-Based Payment a Reality in the NHS: Full Report (February 2019)

Making Outcome-Based Payment a Reality in the NHS: Executive Summary (February 2019)