"Last chance" cancer drugs for UK patients

Terminally-ill cancer patients in the UK are to be given the opportunity to get treatment with yet to be approved drugs, under a new scheme approved by the Department of Health. The setting up of a network of experimental cancer medicines centers is intended not only to possibly help those patients with little hope of recovery, but also to halve the current 10 years that it takes for a new medicinal compound to gain a marketing license.

A spokesperson for the DoH told the Marketletter that "the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centers network represents a joint L35.0 million ($69.5 million) initiative between Cancer Research UK and the Departments of Health in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland established to develop and expand a network of Experimental Cancer Medicine Centers over a five-year period. This initiative brings together laboratory and clinical patient-based research to speed up the development of new therapies by evaluating novel drugs and biomarkers, thus individualizing patient treatment. Funding was awarded to 19 centers of scientific and clinical excellence in translational research from April 1, 2007."

The centers are: St Bart's and the Royal London, Birmingham, Belfast, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College, Institute of Cancer Research, King's College London, Leeds-Bradford-Hull-York, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton and University College London. The initiative was developed under the umbrella of the National Cancer Research Institute and aims to be fully coordinated with the UK Clinical Research Collaboration's activities in experimental medicine outside cancer.