National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
Approved cancer drugs and treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy are funded by the NHS without any financial contribution being taken from the patient. Where NICE has approved a treatment, the NHS must fund it. But not all treatments have been assessed by NICE and these treatments are usually dependent on local NHS decision making. In the case of cancer the Cancer Drugs Fund was set up in 2011 after complaints about NICE decisions on new and expensive cancer drugs with limited benefits. Treatment for fertility problems are approved but not always funded by clinical commissioning groups and they may cap the number of rounds.
Autologous immune enhancement therapy
Adoptive Immuno cell therapy of cancer was first introduced by Steven Rosenberg and his colleagues of National Institute of Health USA. In the late 80s, they published an article in which they reported a low tumor regression rate (2.6–3.3%) in 1205 patients with metastatic cancer who underwent different types of active specific immunotherapy (ASI), and they suggest that AIET with specific chemotherapy or radiotherapy as the future of cancer immunotherapy. In the beginning Immunotherapy treatments involved administration of cytokines such as Interleukin. with an aim of inducing the lymphocytes which will carry their activity of destroying the tumour cells. Thereafter the adverse effects of such intravenously administered cytokines lead to the extraction of the lymphocytes from the blood and culture-expand them in the lab and then to inject the cells alone enable them destroy the cancer cells. Till date different kinds of autologous and allogenic immune cells such as lymphokine-activated killer(LAK)cells, Natural killer (NK) cells, Activated Cytotoxic T lymphocytes(CTLs), Dendritic cells(DCs), Gene manipulated autologous and allogenic Immune cells have been used in clinical applications of Immunotherapy.