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All health boards in Wales have been told to nominate a senior member of their pharmacy team to be responsible for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) planning, as part of a national review of pharmacy aseptic services.
In its review, published in September 2026, Advanced Therapies Wales outlined 23 recommendations designed to ensure pharmacy teams are ready to deliver ATMPs — a class of personalised treatments across cell, gene and regenerative medicine — with all health boards and NHS trusts asked to develop an action plan by 31 March 2027.
The review also recommended that all-Wales guidance be developed to provide advice on the safe preparation of in vivo gene therapies.
The national review was led by Owain Jones, principal pharmacist for clinical trials at Velindre University NHS Trust and currently seconded to the Welsh government. Jones told the Royal College of Pharmacy’s ‘Pharmacy: delivering a healthier Wales’ conference, held in Cardiff on 25 September 2026, that his report was a “call to action”.
Jones told delegates that his secondment to the Welsh government had included assessment of the current pharmacy infrastructure and estate suitability for ATMP handling and preparation, as well as the skills, capacity and training needs of the pharmacy workforce around ATMP delivery.
As part of this, he had conducted structured interviews with pharmacy aseptic service leads across NHS Wales to assess their readiness to prepare gene therapies, as well as to ask them to identify barriers, Jones noted.
He continued: “[It was] really pleasing to see that there was a willingness to support ATMP delivery amongst the pharmacy sector services. They really want to be involved in delivering these treatments and make them available to their patients.”
However, there was “a big variation in the knowledge of pharmacy antiseptic services leads and their teams, and that was essentially based on how exposed they had been to these therapies”, Jones highlighted.
He also said that there were currently no basic training requirements for ATMPs among pharmaceutical aseptic services staff in Wales.
In addition, the report recommended that within nine months, all pharmacy aseptic services staff should complete four ATMP training modules available within the NHS e-learning for healthcare.
“It’s worth noting that the demand for gene therapies is currently relatively low,” Jones said.
“We’ve got a window of opportunity to be able to do some good readiness work and get units ready for these therapies.”
As of September 2026, there were 15 ATMP therapies with a total of 19 positive National Institute for Health and Social Care recommendations approved for use across the NHS, the report revealed.
