Cell and gene therapies are emerging types of medicines that aim to provide treatment opportunities to individuals, with application across a number of illnesses.
Cell and gene therapies are types of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) that are biological medicines based on either genes, cells or tissues.
Somatic cell therapies refer to medicinal products that contain cells or tissues that have been altered to change their biological characteristics to treat a variety of illnesses.
Gene therapies refer to biological medicinal products that work by inserting recombinant genes, which are used to treat a variety of diseases.
Three advanced therapy treatment centres (ATTCs) have been funded by Innovate UK, generating a network comprising of three centres across the UK: Manchester (iMATCH), North of England and Scotland (Northern Alliance) and Midlands and Wales (MW).
The collective goal of the ATTCs is to work with the NHS and industry partners to provide ready-to-use systems and solutions to accelerate the adoption of advanced therapies. Within iMATCH, one core aim is to provide comprehensive training for staff to understand the complex requirements to allow scale-up of delivery of cell and gene therapies across multiple patient groups.
As part of this training programme, the vital role of pharmacists has been recognised. An e-learning module is already in development for hospital pharmacists, as a tool to provide care and support for patients prescribed cell or gene therapies.
We now want to conduct a survey to inform the development of an e-learning module on the use of cell and gene therapies, aimed at pharmacists working in the community or primary care setting.
As the number of patients prescribed cell and gene therapies increases — and they are subsequently discharged home — pharmacists working in primary care may have patients in their practice that have received ATMPs and community pharmacists may be approached by patients and/or their carers for advice.
We are interested in the views of primary care and community pharmacists on the need for this e-learning module. We also want to understand what the possible content of the e-learning module should be so that it is fit for purpose and suitable for community and primary care pharmacists.
If you are happy to complete this survey, then please click this link https://bit.ly/atmppharmacy
The survey will close on 31 March 2022.
For additional information, please contact Nimesh Bhenswala at n.bhenswala@nhs.net
Bahareh Amirloo, lead pharmacist for advanced therapy medicinal products, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital
