Second Kymriah nod keeps Novartis' nose ahead in CAR-T

The US approval of Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) last year enabled the Swiss pharma giant Novartis (NOVN: VX) to boast that it had won the race to market with a CAR T-cell-directed therapy.

That was in B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a relatively small patient pool, with Kymriah only suitable to treat around a third of the 3,100 Americans diagnosed with the rare cancer each year.

"We look forward to leveraging all of our learnings and new capabilities from the initial launch of Kymriah in pediatric and young adult B-cell ALL for this larger group of patients"