Months After Approval, Breakthrough Cancer Drug Given to Just Five Patients
- Delays in getting novel therapy put sales estimates at risk
- No Medicare coverage, one-by-one rulings by private insurers
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Two months after Gilead Sciences Inc.’s breakthrough treatment was approved in the U.S. to treat a deadly form of blood cancer, only a tiny handful of patients have actually gotten the costly therapy, while others linger on waiting lists.
Five people have received the treatment, called Yescarta, at the 15 cancer hospitals authorized to administer it in the U.S., the hospitals told Bloomberg. Waiting lists for the $373,000 treatment have grown to at least 200 people, shrinking only as some very sick patients have died.