Die hochmoderne CAR-T-Krebstherapie wird jetzt in Indien hergestellt – zu einem Zehntel der Kosten. Die Behandlung mit dem Namen NexCAR19 weckt die Hoffnung, dass diese transformative Medizinklasse in Ländern mit niedrigem und mittlerem Einkommen leichter verfügbar wird.

From the article:

>A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood cancers and have burgeoned in the past few years. The Indian CAR-T therapy costs one-tenth that of comparable commercial products available globally.

>A single treatment of NexCAR19, manufactured by Mumbai-based ImmunoACT, costs between US$30,000 and $40,000. The first CAR-T therapy was approved in the United States in 2017, and commercial CAR-T therapies currently cost between $370,000 and $530,000, not including hospital fees and drugs to treat side effects. These treatments have also shown promise in treating autoimmune diseases and brain cancer.

>India’s drug regulator approved NexCAR19 for therapeutic use in India in October. By December, ImmunoACT was administering the therapy to paying patients, and it is now treating some two-dozen people a month in hospitals across the country.

[…]

>The safety profile is better than that of some of the FDA-approved CAR-T treatments, says Kekre. This could be related to the product, as well as to years of the scientific and medical community learning how to better care for patients, she says.

[…]

>To introduce CARs to T cells, researchers typically use lentiviruses, which are expensive. Purchasing enough lentiviral vector for a trial of 50 people can cost up to US$800,000 in the United States, says Steven Highfill, an immunologist at the US National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, who has advised the Indian team. Scientists at ImmunoACT make this gene-delivery vehicle themselves.

>The Indian team also found a cheaper way to mass-produce the engineered cells, avoiding the need for expensive automated machinery, says Highfill.

>Patients’ costs are further reduced by the therapy’s improved safety profile compared with some of the other FDA-approved products, Purwar says. This meant that most patients did not need to spend time in intensive-care units.