NHS England has announced that numerous eligible patients receiving immunotherapy with atezolizumab will now receive “under the skin” injections. This change will help cancer teams to better manage their time.

New Delhi: Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is set to become the world’s first healthcare service to provide an injection for cancer treatment that could potentially reduce treatment times by up to three-quarters. Following approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), NHS England announced on Tuesday that hundreds of patients receiving the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab will now receive injections. This change is expected to create more time for cancer teams. Dr. Alexander Martin, a consultant oncologist at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, expressed that this approval will not only offer more convenient and swift care for patients but also enable medical teams to attend to more patients throughout the day.

NHS England stated that atezolizumab, commonly referred to as Tecentriq, is typically administered intravenously through a drip into patients’ veins. This process can take approximately 30 minutes, but for some patients, it might extend to an hour due to challenges in accessing a vein.

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

Atezolizumab

Manufactured by Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche company, this immunotherapy medication enhances the patient’s immune system to identify and eliminate cancer cells. The therapy is currently administered through transfusion to NHS patients diagnosed with various types of cancer, such as lung, breast, liver, and bladder cancers.

According to NHS England, it is expected around 3,600 cancer patients starting the treatment of atezolizumab every year in England to switch onto the time-saving injection, adding that patients receiving intravenous chemotherapy in combination with atezolizumab may remain on the transfusion.

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