Something has to give to find a route to reimburse CAR-T therapies

When Novartis’ (NOVN: VX) Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) was made available to a small group of young patients in an agreement with NHS England less than a month ago, the decision came just 10 days after the drug was approved in Europe.

This made it one of the fastest funding approvals in the 70-year history of the National Health Service (NHS), something that was particularly remarkable because Kymriah is a groundbreaking CAR-T therapy that is specifically developed for each individual patient and involves reprogramming their own immune system cells which are then used to target their cancer.

One might have expected Kymriah’s price tag to have got in the way of any such deal. It costs around £282,000 ($369,000) per patient at its full list price. But Novartis agreed an undisclosed discounted price and now Kymriah can be accessed on the NHS by patients of up to 25 years old with B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that is refractory, in relapse post-transplant or in second or later relapse.