Cancer Drugs Fund

The Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) was introduced in England in 2011. It was established in order to provide a means by which National Health Service (NHS) patients in England could get cancer drugs rejected by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence because they were not cost effective. Its establishment was confirmed by the UK government's coalition agreement in 2010, and by the White Paper, Equity and excellence – Liberating the NHS.

Since April 2011, the fund paid for nearly 100,000 people with cancer to access treatments. It was closed to new drugs from October 2015 to 29 July 2016 in line with the recommendation of the independent Cancer Taskforce report, which called for urgent reform to put the CDF on a more sustainable footing.

Following the reforms in 2016 the objectives were updated. The new arrangements put it on a more sustainable footing with 3 key objectives:

The previous objectives of the CDF, as set out by the UK government in 2011, were that it should:

The patient's consultant must apply to the fund using an application form supplied by NHS England. Decision Summaries which are the formal decisions of the Chemotherapy Clinical Reference Group are published.

Avastin is the most frequently requested treatment. Kadcyla is the most expensive drug funded. Both are manufactured by Hoffmann-La Roche, which has been described as the largest beneficiary of the fund.

From July 2016 it became a “managed access” fund, paying for new drugs for a set period before they are definitively approved or rejected by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. It did not accept any new drugs between April and July 2016. From 2016 each drug has evaluation criteria and a timescale for effectiveness to be assessed. If it is considered to be cost effective it will be available to any patient. If not it will not be available at all in the English NHS.

The current list of treatments funded by the CDF is available from the NHS England website: https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/cdf/cancer-drugs-fund-list/.

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