UK patients with a particular form of blood cancer will get access to Bristol-Myers Squibb's immunotherapy Opdivo through the Early Access to Medicines Scheme, ahead of its European license.

Opdivo will be available through the scheme as monotherapy for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) after autologous stem cell transplant and treatment with brentuximab vedotin.

The approval is based on data from a pivotal Phase II trial, which showed that for patients treated with the drug — a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor that works by harnessing the ability of the immune system to fight certain types of cancer — the objective response rate was 66.3 percent.

Almost 2,000 people are diagnosed with cHL in the UK each year, mostly adults in their 20s and 30s.