Royal Marsden Private Care is proud to announce that it is the first in the UK to treat patients with multiple myeloma with CAR-T cell therapy. While treatment is not yet available for people with myeloma in the UK on the NHS (although there are some ongoing clinical trials), Myeloma UK is fighting hard to access new, life-changing treatments, such as CAR-T cell treatment. A number of CAR-T cell treatments are being developed for the treatment of myeloma; however, CAR-T cell treatments for myeloma are currently not available for routine use in the UK and are only available to patients as part of a clinical trial. Myeloma UK continues to advocate for access to CAR-T cell treatments in the UK, along with other effective new treatment options.
We privately offer innovative CAR-T cell therapy to help treat several types of blood cancer. These include lymphomas, some forms of leukemia, and myeloma. This page provides an overview of CAR-T cell therapy, the specific conditions it can treat, and what you can expect from the procedure at Hammersmith Hospital in London. CAR-T cell therapy is a type of cancer treatment that harnesses the ability of our immune system to destroy cancer cells and offers a promising new approach to treat myeloma.
This treatment involves removing T cells (cells that help protect you from infections and diseases) from the patient's own blood, modifying them in a laboratory, and then returning them to the patient to search for and destroy the cancer. A specific type of CAR-T cell therapy targets a protein called BCMA found in myeloma cells. However, this treatment is not available from the National Health Service for people with myeloma, as it isn't always effective. Research is needed to explore new CAR-T cell therapies that are effective for all people with the disease.
Cancer research is continuously exploring whether CAR T-cell therapy can be effective for other types of cancer. More recently, CAR T-cell therapy was approved for the treatment of people with multiple myeloma and is now available in HCA Healthcare UK.
