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Outrage over the high cost of cancer care has focused on skyrocketing drug prices, including the $475,000 price tag for the country’s first gene therapy, Novartis’ Kymriah, a leukemia treatment approved in August.
But the total costs of Kymriah and the 21 similar drugs in development — known as CAR T-cell therapies — will be far higher than many have imagined, reaching $1 million or more per patient, according to leading cancer experts. The next CAR T-cell drug could be approved as soon as November.
Although Kymriah’s price tag has “shattered oncology drug pricing norms,” said Leonard Saltz, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, “the sticker price is just the starting point.”
These therapies lead to a cascade of costs, propelled by serious side effects that require sophisticated management, Saltz said. For this class of drugs, Saltz advised consumers to “think of the $475,000 as parts, not labor.”
Dr. Hagop Kantarjian, a leukemia specialist and professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, estimates Kymriah’s total cost could reach...