Posted by Michael Wonder on 28 Apr 2018
Total costs of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell immunotherapy
26 April 2018 - In 2017, the US FDA approved the drugs tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah; Novartis) and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta; Kite Pharma) as the first chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) immunotherapies.
Treatment with tisagenlecleucel has been priced at $475, 000 and axicabtagene ciloleucel at $373, 000; however, these prices are for the drug products alone and do not account for the costs associated with leukapheresis, lymphodepletion therapy, and the adverse effects of CAR-T immunotherapy. These costs are not negligible as 43 patients (44%) who received tisagenlecleucel in clinical trials required stays in the intensive care unit for cytokine release syndrome (CRS).
In this study, we estimated the total costs of CAR-T immunotherapy, including non-drug costs, using publicly available data.
