First drug to delay onset of type 1 diabetes made available on NHS

The published price of teplizumab works out at around £150,000 per course of treatment, although the NHS has negotiated a confidential discount with the drugmaker Sanofi. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which has recommended the drug in both England and Wales, estimates that around 1,100 adults and children could be eligible in its first year, with around 820 per year offered it in the longer term once a backlog in demand has cleared. "This is a genuinely exciting recommendation," says Helen Knight, director of medicines evaluation at NICE. "For the first time, we have a treatment that can give people diagnosed at an early stage precious extra time before they need to manage the full demands of the condition." Breakthrough T1D, which funded earlier research that helped make the drug possible, said that a number of other type 1 diabetes immunotherapy treatments are now in development. In the future, the hope is that new patients will eventually be given a personalised combination of those drugs and will never have to become dependent on insulin therapy. NICE guidance does not automatically apply in Northern Ireland, while in Scotland a separate body, the Scottish Medicines Consortium, decides which drugs the NHS should offer. The SMC said it expects to issue advice for teplizumab in early 2027.