NHS rolls out minute-long cancer injection for thousands of patients

The biggest change is not the medicine itself but the clock: thousands of cancer patients in England will be offered a pembrolizumab injection that takes about 60 seconds, replacing IV sessions that can last up to two hours and freeing up scarce clinic capacity.

NHS England said the under-the-skin version of the immunotherapy, also known as Keytruda, is being rolled out for 14 cancer types, including lung, breast, head and neck and cervical cancer. Around 14,000 patients start pembrolizumab therapy each year in England, and most are expected to benefit from the new option. Depending on cancer type, the jab can be given in 60 seconds or in about two minutes every six weeks, and NHS England said it could cut treatment time by up to 90 percent.

The operational payoff goes beyond shorter appointments. NHS England said the ready-to-administer injection removes the need for pharmacy teams to prepare IV bags under sterile conditions, which should save staff time as well as patient time. In practical terms, that means fewer minutes spent filling chairs, fewer hours tied up in preparation rooms and more room for teams to move patients through treatment units without expanding the estate.

One of the first patients to receive the jab, 89-year-old Shirley Xerxes of St Albans, was treated at Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in Northwood, Middlesex. She said it was “unbelievable” to be in the chair for just a matter of minutes and said it gave her more time to live her life, including gardening. Professor Peter Johnson, NHS National Clinical Director for Cancer, said the injection offers a “lifeline” and will help patients get back to living their lives rather than spending hours in hospital.

The rollout follows earlier NHS moves to speed up cancer treatment with injections. In 2025, the health service introduced subcutaneous nivolumab for 15 cancer types, a first in Europe for that drug, with about 1,200 patients a month in England expected to benefit. NHS England said that jab takes three to five minutes instead of 30 to 60 minutes by IV and could save about 1,000 treatment hours each month. In 2023, it also backed a world-first subcutaneous atezolizumab rollout that cut treatment time by up to 75 percent and was expected to help hundreds of patients a year.

For the NHS, the pattern is clear: faster-delivery cancer therapies can improve patient experience and ease pressure on staff without changing the underlying treatment. For U.S. hospitals, the same gains would depend on whether regulators, payers and oncology services are willing to redesign reimbursement, staffing and infusion-center workflows around shorter visits rather than longer ones.