Libtayo
An intravenous immunotherapy used to treat advanced skin and lung cancers.
Where Cemiplimab is approved
All regulators →Of the three regulators tracked here, the first to approve Cemiplimab was the US, on 28 Sep 2018. It is approved in 3 of the 3 regulators tracked here.
- 1 EU safety letter (DHPC), latest: quality defect for Libtayo, 10 Nov 2025
From the regulators' own registers: FDA Drugs@FDA, the EMA medicines list and Health Canada's Notice of Compliance database. Dates are the first listed approval of a product containing only this substance; combination products and nationally authorised EU medicines are not counted.
What health systems spend on Cemiplimab
All medicines →From NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis (Open Government Licence v3.0) and CMS State Drug Utilization Data. Both are gross amounts: neither system publishes its discounts or rebates per drug. Products combining several substances are not counted here.
How Cemiplimab works
All drug targets →- Programmed cell death protein 1 inhibitor InhibitorTarget: PDCD1 programmed cell death 1✓ In ChEMBL and the Guide to Pharmacology
- Cervical adenocarcinomaPhase 3
- Cervical squamous cell carcinomaPhase 3
- MelanomaPhase 3
- Metastatic malignant neoplasmPhase 3
- Metastatic melanomaPhase 3
- Non-small cell lung carcinomaPhase 3
- Merkel cell skin cancerPhase 2
- Adrenal cortex carcinomaPhase 2
- AngiosarcomaPhase 2
- Biliary tract cancerPhase 2
Mechanisms and diseases from ChEMBL via the Open Targets Platform (release 26.09), ChEMBL record CHEMBL4297723, CC BY-SA 3.0. Targets checked against the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (2026.3), ligand 10090, CC BY-SA 4.0. Trial phases are not approvals: approved uses are shown from the regulators' own records where we hold them.
NICE appraisals of Cemiplimab
All NICE appraisals →NICE, which decides whether the NHS in England should fund new medicines, has published 7 technology appraisals of Cemiplimab. 7 are current, and 3 of these recommend it for at least some patients.
NICE decisions apply to the NHS in England. In Ireland the HSE decides on reimbursement, advised by the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics. Titles, categories and dates link to the guidance on nice.org.uk. © NICE 2026 technology appraisal guidance. Available from www.nice.org.uk/guidance. All rights reserved. Subject to Notice of rights. NICE guidance is prepared for the National Health Service in England. All NICE guidance is subject to regular review and may be updated or withdrawn. NICE accepts no responsibility for the use of its content in this product/publication.
Patient leaflets for Cemiplimab
The package leaflet is the official guide for patients that comes with every medicine. These links go to the regulators that publish it.
- IEIreland: 1 product on the HPRA listEach product record links to the HPRA, which publishes the leaflet and SmPC.
- EUEuropean Union: LibtayoEMA product information: package leaflet and summary of product characteristics in every EU language.
- UKUnited Kingdom: Search MHRA ProductsPatient information leaflets and SmPCs for UK-licensed products.
- USUnited States: Search DailyMedFDA-approved labels, including patient and medication guides.
Leaflets differ between brands and countries; always read the one that comes with your own medicine. This is regulatory information, not medical advice.
What Libtayo is used for
LIBTAYO is a programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) blocking antibody indicated: Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma (CSCC) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (mCSCC) or locally advanced CSCC (laCSCC) who are not candidates for curative surgery or curative radiation. ( 1.1 ) for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients with CSCC at high risk of recurrence after surgery and radiation. ( 1.1 , 14.1 ) Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic BCC (laBCC or mBCC) who have been previously treated with a hedgehog pathway inhibitor or for whom a hedgehog pathway inhibitor is not appropriate. ( 1.2 ) Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) in combination with platinum‐based chemotherapy for the first‐line treatment of adult patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with no EGFR, ALK or ROS1 a…
How it works
12.1 Mechanism of Action Binding of the PD-1 ligands PD-L1 and PD-L2 to the PD-1 receptor found on T cells inhibits T-cell proliferation and cytokine production. Upregulation of PD-1 ligands occurs in some tumors and signaling through this pathway can contribute to inhibition of active T-cell immune surveillance of tumors. Cemiplimab-rwlc is a recombinant human immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4) monoclonal antibody that binds to PD-1 and blocks its interaction with PD-L1 and PD-L2, releasing PD-1 pathway-mediated inhibition of the immune response, including the anti-tumor immune response. In syngeneic mouse tumor models, blocking PD-1 activity resulted in decreased tumor growth.
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How this page is built
The facts on this page are pulled directly from official U.S. FDA datasets — they are not written from memory. Each field below names the dataset it came from, so you can check it yourself.
- FDA Drug Label (openFDA) ↗ Indications, mechanism of action and pharmacologic class
- Drugs@FDA ↗ First FDA approval date and the company holding the application
- FDA Drug Shortage Database ↗ Current US supply / shortage status
Plain-English summaries and drug-class explainers are written and reviewed by Sreepriya Prasannan (MSc Digital Transformation of Life Sciences (Innopharma Education / Griffith College); MSc & BSc Botany). Data is retrieved automatically from the sources above and cross-checked with AI-assisted verification (Anthropic's Claude) — brand and generic names are matched against the exact FDA product record so that a combination product or a different formulation cannot be mistaken for the drug on this page. An editor reviews the result before publication. We describe this in full in our editorial standards and corrections policy. The FDA data on this page was last retrieved on 5 Oct 2026. How every register is built: methodology · fixes we have made: corrections log.