If you are dying from Leukemia, a new immunotherapy modifies your immune cells & CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE: BUT IT IS PRICED AT $475,000 BY NOVARTIS!
Is your life worth $475.000.00 – of course – but this is clearly not a sustainable model of payment for all the new immunotherapy treatments that will be emerging for cancer, autoimmune and other diseases. The companies would say that their R & D must be rewarded. And I do not begrudge their profiting from their efforts, which are often life saving. What is ironic though is that it is not a synthetic drug but harnessing your body’s own immune system to fight cancer that is the breakthrough. So you essentially have to pay half a million dollars to have your own body conditioned to treat itself. As I have often written, this utilization of the body’s own defenses is the best hope for cure of cancers and autoimmune diseases such as MS and rheumatoid arthritis. The stem cell treatments with which we are involved are another type of treatment wherein we use your body’s own cells to treat it. In this case though the treatment is carried out doctor to patient without commercial intermediaries. Ultimately, in my opinion, this will be the paradigm that produces the most clinical benefit with the best chance of avoiding unsustainable costs.
Called tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) it is used by B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that has not responded to other treatment.
It all adds up to some of the most expensive therapies ever invented. The first CAR T-cell therapy, tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah)—a treatment for children and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) developed by Novartis—was priced at$475,000 for a one-time treatment.Feb 21, 2018 CAR T Cells: Engineering Patients' Immune Cells to Treat Their Cancers. ... A rapidly emerging immunotherapy approach is called adoptive cell transfer (ACT): collecting and using patients' own immune cells to treat their cancer. Dec 14, 2017
