Posted by Michael Wonder on 06 Nov 2019
Innovation and access at the mercy of payment policy: the future of chimeric antigen receptor therapies
1 November 2019 - In 2017, the US FDA approved the first chimeric antigen receptor therapies (CAR-Ts), tisagenlecleucel and axicabtagene ciloleucel.
Both are the vanguard of a new class of therapies that involve engineering a patient’s own white blood cells to treat a disease. The list prices of tisagenlecleucel and axicabtagene ciloleucel range from $373,000 to $475,000. For adults with relapsed or recurrent lymphoma, these therapies achieve complete responses in 40% to 54% of patients versus 7% of patients treated with other salvage therapies, and more than 30% of patients enjoy prolonged disease-free survival. Yet, hospitals may lose up to $300,000 per treatment when they provide CAR-T.
How can hospitals lose so much money on these so-called cost-effective therapies?
