Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure that personalised cancer vaccines for brain tumour patients will become available on the NHS.

There are currently no personalised cancer vaccines with a marketing authorisation for use in the United Kingdom. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has published draft guidance to support developers of personalised cancer immunotherapies, commonly known as personalised cancer vaccines, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/draft-guidance-on-individualised-mrna-cancer-immunotherapies

Any new licensed personalised cancer vaccine for brain tumours would be evaluated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which makes recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS. NICE aims wherever possible to issue guidance for the NHS on new licensed medicines close to the time of licensing, and NICE-recommended medicines are eligible for funding through the Cancer Drugs Fund from the point of draft guidance, bringing forward patient access by up to five months.

In April this year, NICE and the MHRA also launched a new joint pathway for medicines, a commitment in the Government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan, which will accelerate access for NHS patients to clinically and cost effective medicines by three to six months.

Further, the NHS Cancer Vaccine Launch Pad (CVLP) is a platform set up to accelerate the development of cancer vaccines and speed up access to mRNA personalised cancer vaccine clinical trials for cancer patients. The CVLP has been instrumental in accelerating trial activity in cancer research, with CVLP sites driving faster activation and enrolment timelines. The platform is designed to be company- and clinical trial type-agnostic. Any company that wishes to deliver trials via the platform, including those developing vaccines for brain tumours, can contact the CVLP to explore how the platform can support their research.