A new leukemia drug being hailed by doctors as a breakthrough could prove among the most expensive therapies ever on the market: For a single treatment, the price is expected to reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Novartis hasn’t announced a price for the medicine, but British health authorities have said a price of $649,000 for a one-time treatment would be justified, given the significant benefits.
The treatment belongs to a new class of medications called CAR T-cell therapies, which involve harvesting patients’ immune cells and genetically altering them to kill cancer. It’s been tested in patients whose leukemia has relapsed in spite of chemotherapy or a bone-marrow transplant.
The prognosis for these patients is normally bleak. But in a clinical trial, 83% of those treated with CAR T-cell therapy have gone into remission.
CAR T cells have been successful only in a limited number of cancers and are being suggested for use as a last resort when all else has failed. As a result, only a few hundred patients a year would be eligible for them, at least initially.
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