A Cancer Breakthrough Near FDA Approval Has a Costly Side Effect
- Novartis’s blood cancer treatment given nod by FDA panel
- Patients require expensive immune-boosting after treatment
This article is for subscribers only.
A breakthrough cancer therapy that can wipe out leukemia in some deathly ill children and young adults comes with an expensive, long-lasting side effect.
The blood cancer treatment, called CAR-T, is made by Novartis AG and is on the brink of approval after a panel of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration backed it Wednesday in a 10-0 vote. It’s highly effective: In a clinical trial of patients who’d mostly run out of treatment options, 83 percent of patients who took it saw their disease go into remission.