Breakthroughs Hope to Make CAR T-cell Cancer Therapies More Affordable

With over 34,000 patients having already been treated worldwide, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell technology is revolutionizing the field of cancer therapy. Some studies have shown that up to 50% of patients treated with CAR T-cell therapies found lasting remission, with no additional treatment needed.

Since 2017 alone, eleven CAR T-cell products have been commercialized, with seven being approved by the US Food and Drug administration (FDA).

However, while big strides have been made in the field, and treatment results have been very promising, the majority of CAR T-cell therapies target hematological, or blood cancers alone, with all therapies currently coming with a very high price tag.

Today, the average cost of CAR T-cell therapy in the U.S. is between $300,000 and $600,000. Yet, with hospital time and post therapy care, the costs per patient could rise to over $1 million.

Recent coverage by MIT Technology Review explains the current process and expense by saying, “It’s not hard to see why CAR-T comes with a high price tag. Creating these therapies is a multistep process.

“First doctors harvest T cells from the patient. Those cells are then engineered outside the body using a viral vector, which inserts an artificial gene that codes for a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR… The cells must then be grown in the lab until they number in the millions…

“It’s a high-tech and laborious process.”

But new breakthroughs in CAR T-cell technology look to not only bring the costs associated with the development and administration of the technology down, perhaps drastically, but also look to widen the field of targetable cancers, including solid tumors, with a single product.

As noted in the MIT Technology Review, “One way to cut costs is to produce the therapy in countries where drug development and manufacturing is significantly cheaper.”

Citing the MIT piece, Peter Choo, Chairman of CytoMed Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GDTC) said, “Indeed, producing CAR T-cell therapies in countries where manufacturing is significantly cheaper will bring down the costs.

“This is why CytoMed not only conducts our research and plans to manufacture our CAR T-cell therapies in Southeast Asia but has recently partnered with SunAct Cancer Institute for a Phase I/II clinical trial in India.

“Further, we look to develop an allogenic, off-the-shelf product that has the capability to treat a multitude of cancers, both solid tumors and blood and this is now in a Phase 1 first-in-human trial in Singapore.”

“By creating, trialing and manufacturing our off-the-shelf therapies in Asia, we believe we could have the ability to greatly increase patients access to this potentially lifesaving treatment, and to do so at a far lower cost than we currently see.”

Read more about CytoMed Therapeutics’ (NASDAQ: GDTC) novel, off-the-shelf allogenic cellular immunotherapies HERE

Or read more of the MIT Technology Review HERE