Reimbursement uncertainties hinder patient access to CAR-T therapies

The approval of CAR-T therapies Kymriah® and Yescarta® in late 2017 represented an enormous milestone for patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood cancers. However, the ongoing uncertainty over reimbursement has made it difficult for patients to access the CAR-T treatments. Despite the months passed since the therapies were FDA approved, only some patients that…

Stem cell therapy

Cell therapy in 2018: Mid-year review

2018 has been a year of advancement for the cell therapy industry. With the first two approved CAR-T cell therapies now on the market, organizations are shifting their focus from commercialization to industrialization through well-designed supply chains, standardized quality assurance practices and long-term outcomes tracking to support current and future cell therapy products. Let’s take…

As CAR-T therapies mature, researchers begin to track long-term patient outcomes

CAR-T therapies progressed to market at an unprecedented pace. Due to their accelerated FDA approvals, long-term data on how patients fare post-treatment isn’t readily available. As the number of patients commercially treated with CAR-T therapy grows, long-term outcomes data has the potential to influence the entire industry of personalized cell and gene therapies. As with…

car-t cell

CAR-T 2.0

The field of cancer immunotherapies was buoyed last year by the FDA’s approval of the first autologous CAR-T drugs on the market, Novartis’ Kymriah and Gilead’s Yescarta. But, many drug makers are already looking in a new direction — off-the-shelf, or allogeneic, CAR-T therapies. In autologous therapies, like Kymriah and Yescarta, scientists isolate T cells from…