Two CAR T-Cell Therapies Greenlighted in Europe

Cancer treatments from Novartis and Gilead earn approval from EU regulators, but a first pass by the UK’s state-funded health service finds CAR T is too expensive.

Written byJef Akst

| 2 min read

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Update (September 19): Although the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) decided that Kymriah could be used in young patients with hard-to-treat leukemia, the agency ruled that the therapy is not cost-effective for adults with lymphoma.

Update (September 5): Novartis struck a deal with the UK’s National Health Service to accelerate the delivery of Kymriah to young leukemia patients not responding to other treatments, Reuters reports. List price in the country is £282,000 ($361,750) per patient.

The European Commission has approved the use of Novartis’s tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) and Gilead’s axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), two chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T) therapies, for certain cancer patients. This new class of therapies has been hailed as a breakthrough in cancer treatment, but cost is a sticking point.

Just one day after the European Commission greenlighted Yescarta, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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