FDA Approves Gene Therapy Tested In Boston To Treat Adults With Lymphoma

TRENTON, N.J. (CBS/AP) — U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved a second gene therapy for a blood cancer, a one-time, custom-made treatment for aggressive lymphoma in adults.
The Food and Drug Administration allowed sales of the treatment from Kite Pharma. It uses the same technology, called CAR-T, as the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. in August, a treatment for childhood leukemia from Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
That Novartis treatment was tested in Boston. In those tests, Dana Farber and Brigham and Women’s Hospital cancer researchers found that 80 percent of lymphoma patients who underwent the treatment were alive six months later.
“In just several decades, gene therapy has gone from being a promising concept to a practical solution to deadly and largely untreatable forms of cancer,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
(Image credit: Novartis)
The Kite treatment, called Yescarta, will cost $373,000 per patient, according to drugmaker Gilead Sciences. Kite became a subsidiary of Foster City, California-based Gilead this month.
CAR-T treatment uses gene therapy techniques not to fix disease-causing genes but to turbocharge T cells, immune system soldiers that cancer can often evade. The T cells are filtered from a patient’s blood, reprogrammed to target and kill cancer cells, and then hundreds of millions of copies are grown.
Returned to the patient, all the revved-up cells can continue multiplying to fight disease for mon...

Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - October 19, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Health – CBS Boston Tags: Health Healthwatch Local News blood cancer Brigham and Women's Hospital Dana Farber FDA Gene Therapy Novartis Pharmaceuticals Source Type: news