Published on 4 December 2024
A blood cancer treatment that transforms cells in the immune system so they can attack and destroy cancer cells will be available in Cheshire and Merseyside for the first time with the launch of a new NHS service.
The Cancer Alliance has welcomed the news that The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre has become the first NHS centre in Cheshire and Merseyside to offer Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy – CAR-T therapy for short – a highly innovative form of immunotherapy.
It involves removing T immune cells from a patient’s blood and modifying them to become CAR-T cells that are then transplanted back into the patient. The CAR-T cells can recognise a specific protein on cancer cells and attach to it, allowing them to attack the cancer.
The treatment is very specialist and is only available in a few centres nationally for patients with specific cancers – including B cell lymphomas and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – that have not responded to other treatments or have returned after them.
Until now, patients from Cheshire and Merseyside have had to travel to other parts of the UK to receive it.
Each treatment is manufactured individually using a patient’s own T cells in a process that takes around four to six weeks.
Patients referred to The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool for CAR-T therapy will first have their T cells collected via a daycase procedure carried out in the hospital’s therapeutic apheresis suite by a team from NHS Blood and Transplant.
Their T cells will then be transported to a specialist pharmaceutical company to develop their own personalised CAR-T treatment in a process that takes around four to six weeks.
While the patient’s CAR-T cells are being produced for them, patients will often be given chemotherapy or radiotherapy to prepare their body for treatment.
Then, when their CAR-T cells are ready, they will be admitted to the stem cell transplantation and cellular therapies ward of Clatterbridge’s Liverpool hospital. The CAR-T cells will be given to them in a transfusion that takes around 30 minutes.
As CAR-T is a very intensive treatment and people’s immune systems can react in different ways to it, patients will be closely monitored at Clatterbridge for the first few weeks afterwards.
Dr Muhammad Saif, Director of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Clatterbridge, said: “CAR-T therapy is a highly-specialist immunotherapy treatment that has shown remarkable results for many patients.
“Although the main use currently is for certain blood cancers that have not responded to other treatments, there is new evidence emerging that it could benefit other types of cancers and non-cancerous conditions such as immune disorders.
“Until now, this treatment has not been available locally so patients from Cheshire and Merseyside, Lancashire, North Wales and the Isle of Man have had to travel to other parts of the UK to receive it. It is very exciting that they can now access this highly innovative treatment close to home.”
Jon Hayes, CMCA Managing Director, said: “This is a really important step forward in our region. CAR-T therapy is one of a number of innovative, ground-breaking treatments for cancer that are revolutionising the way we treat the disease and get better outcomes for our patients.
“Introducing any new treatment takes time, effort and dedication, and I would like to thank the team at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre for leading this development in collaboration with partner organisations.”