The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Britain's state-funded health service, has deemed Gilead's Yescarta, a CAR-T cell therapy for certain forms of blood cancer, too expensive. The drug is the first CAR-T therapy assessed by NICE.
Gilead was aiming to get the drug approved for use on the National Health Service. This rejection comes after just being approved by the the European Commission for two aggressive forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Yescarta has also been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since late last year.
The Yescarta treatment is a new approach to fighting cancer and involves extracting infection-fighting cells from a patient. These cells are then genetically engineered to recognize cancer cells and infused back.
The U.S. list price for Yescarta is $373,000 while the UK price remains confidential.
Read the Reuters report
[javascriptSnippet]