The US health insurance program Medicare is considering plans to extend its coverage to include CAR-T cell therapies. The programme is set to announce a final decision within the next few weeks on whether to incorporate the personalised treatment platform, with two CAR-T blood cancer products already having been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In an interview with Nature, Dr David Sinclair, director of clinical research at Cancer Research UK, said: “While we are not yet ready for widespread use, this new technology could be very useful in treating patients
The US health insurance program Medicare is considering plans to extend its coverage to include CAR-T cell therapies. The programme is set to announce a final decision within the next few weeks on whether to incorporate the personalised treatment platform, with two CAR-T blood cancer products already having been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Proponents of the plan argue that incorporating the treatments would save money in the long-term, despite their high upfront costs, due to their effectiveness.