Thousands more cancer patients in England will receive life-extending drugs recommend by their doctor due to an extra £400 million invested in the Cancer Drugs Fund, David Cameron has announced.
Alongside plans to extend the fund, a project to map 100,000 genomes was given a boost with the announcement of a pioneering partnership between Cancer Research UK and Government-owned Genomics England, as part of the Prime Minister’s ambition for Britain to lead the world in unlocking the power of DNA data.
In order to understand which treatments and drugs will be effective, the whole DNA code of 3,000 cancer patients will be sequenced as well as a further 3,000 whole DNA sequences for their cancer tumours.
Cancer Research UK and Genomics England’s partnership is part of the Government’s ambition to make Britain the first country in the world to sequence 100,000 genomes – or individual DNA codes –within five years.
More than 34,000 patients have benefitted from the Cancer Drugs Fund since it was created in 2010. Today’s announcement means that the Fund is now confirmed for an extra two years until March 2016. The extension will allow new patients to benefit and guarantee that those currently receiving drugs will continue to get them. The new money means the amount committed will top £1 billion in total.
