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Up to 15,000 cancer patients a year could be treated with a quick injection, NHS England has announced.
It is the first health service in Europe to offer patients the injectable form of the immunotherapy drug nivolumab.
The injection takes three to five minutes to administer and is suitable for 15 different cancers, including lung, bowel, kidney, bladder, oesophageal, skin and head and neck cancer.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved injectable nivolumab, known as Opdivo, as an alternative to administering the drug via an intravenous drip, which can take up to an hour.
With patients needing treatment fortnightly or monthly, NHS England said the move would save more than a year’s worth of treatment time each year.
Prof Peter Johnson, NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer, said the time savings would “allow teams to treat even more patients” and free up hospital capacity.
“Immunotherapy has already been a huge step forward for many NHS patients with cancer, and being able to offer it as an injection in minutes means we can make the process far more convenient,” he said.
Nivolumab helps the immune system fight cancer by blocking signals from tumour cells that stop the immune system from attacking them. It binds to a protein called PD-1 (programmed death-1) on T-cells, a type of immune cell. This blocks cancer cells from switching off T-cells, allowing the immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells.
NHS England said about 1,200 patients a month could benefit from moving to the jab, and that most new patients would be likely to receive it.
The injections will not cost the NHS more than for the intravenous infusion, after NHS England and the manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb negotiated a price agreement.
Naser Turabi, the director of evidence and implementation at Cancer Research UK, said: “Innovations like this will be vital for treating cancer patients sooner and more efficiently. We’re in a golden age of cancer research, and it’s essential that our health service continues to adapt to deliver the best possible care for patients.
“The government has the opportunity to build on this with the upcoming national cancer plan for England, which must provide investment and reform for the NHS in order to get more cutting-edge treatments and technologies to patients as quickly as possible.”
