New cancer jab available for patients at three health trusts

Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has confirmed that a key injectable cancer drug which can be used to treat multiple cancers is being used in three of Northern Ireland's five health trusts.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is a type of immunotherapy that helps the body's own immune system attack cancer cells.

Earlier in the week, there were calls for the new injectable drug to be made available in Northern Ireland, after it was announced that it is available in England and Wales.

But Nesbitt, responding to a question by the Democratic Unionist Party's Diane Dodds, confirmed it was already available and said he hoped to announce soon that all health trusts would be prescribing the drug to suitable patients.

The Western, South Eastern and Northern health trusts are currently using the drug.

The drug is normally received by patients through a drip which can take more than an hour in hospital, but injectables are quicker and less intrusive.

Following approval from the UK's medicines regulator, NHS hospitals in all parts of the UK can make orders for subcutaneous pembrolizumab.

It is up to local trusts and hospitals to implement roll out on their timelines, a firm representing the drug's manufacturer previously told BBC News NI.

Nesbitt said he recognised the benefits of rolling out drugs such as Keytruda to patients in Northern Ireland "in terms of saving precious time for those receiving treatment for cancer as well as releasing valuable time so clinicians can care for more people".

"Three of the five trusts have already rolled out injectable Keytruda in April of last year, and that's part of a managed transition involving a substantial programme of work to update existing clinical protocols and minimise waste of the existing infusion product," Nesbitt said.

Keytruda, which is already used to treat multiple cancers, is a type of immunotherapy that helps the body's own immune system attack cancer cells.

The injectable version has been rolled out for patients in England and Wales from Monday.

Since 2015, NHS patients have received the world's best-selling drug through a drip – or intravenous infusion – which can take more than an hour to administer in hospital.

In its new form, the treatment will be given every three weeks as a one-minute injection or every six weeks as a two-minute injection, depending on an individual's cancer diagnosis.

NHS England said the new injection should save patients and staff valuable time.

Cancer can hide from the body's own immune system by producing proteins that send a "stop signal" telling our immune cells not to attack.

Some scientists describe this as the disease hiding behind an "invisibility cloak".

Immunotherapy works by blocking the signal allowing those cancer cells to be more easily recognised and destroyed.

That discovery won two scientists - James Allison and Tasuku Honjo - the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2018.

Keytruda was one of the earliest immunotherapy drugs to be approved, first for skin cancer and later for other forms of the disease.

By most measures it is now the biggest-selling prescription medicine in the world, with global sales of $30bn (£22bn) in 2025.

Until now, hospital pharmacy teams have had to prepare a bag of the drug under sterile conditions which is then given as an infusion into the vein through a cannula.