Posted by Michael Wonder on 21 May 2019
Novartis CEO: gene therapy offers hope of cures in one treatment, but US needs new pricing and payment model
17 May 2019 - We live in an incredible era of progress in human health. Advances in cell and gene therapies are beginning to yield powerful new treatments for some of the most devastating illnesses.
With many of these new therapies we are no longer combating diseases over time, but potentially curing them in a single treatment.
This is a major breakthrough, but it will introduce new upfront cost challenges to our already stretched health-care system. Policymakers and companies must work together to solve these challenges so that patients can gain access to the tremendous benefit these therapies deliver.
By leveraging a patient’s own biology, cell and gene therapies are already reversing congenital blindness, curing aggressive forms of paediatric leukaemia and may soon grant infants with neurological genetic conditions a second chance at life. Researchers are currently developing 300 of these therapies targeting more than 100 serious and often deadly diseases.
