Cancer treatments (FOI)

Request

What drugs does Jersey offer to patients with Metastatic RCC? Please provide a list together with which line therapy these are given ie first, second, third line. If these don’t include immunotherapy drugs please explain why.

Response

Treatment of all cancers depends on individual factors, including the extent of the disease, type of cancer and the person’s general health. In particular, patients with metastatic kidney cancer are treated with systemic therapy that includes targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Kidney cancer tends to be resistant to both chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

All cancer treatments in Jersey follow the UK National Institute for Health and Care (NICE) guidelines. A caveat to this is that in Jersey we do not have access to the Cancer Drug Fund medications automatically. If we consider that a patient is a candidate for a treatment that is not yet NICE approved, we request it through the Individual Patient Funding Request (IPFR) and a panel reviews suitability for authorization of the new treatment for the patient.

Immunotherapy is a type of therapy that takes advantage of a person’s own immune system to help kill cancer cells. We have Immunomodulators such as Nivolumab and Pembrolizumab approved for subsets of patients with advanced kidney cancer; Ipilimumab approved, in combination with Nivolumab, for subsets of patients with advanced kidney cancer has to be requested through the IPFR explained above. We have targeted antibodies such as Bevacizumab and other biological treatments such as Sunitinib, Carbozantinib, Everolimus and Sorafenib at our disposal.

All cancer patients are discussed in multidisciplinary discussions before treatment is commenced. These multidisciplinary discussions include experts in the area from reference centres in the UK.