Perspectives

Pharmaceutical companies guaranteeing results and paying for failures? Payers paying more if a cancer patient has a shorter lifespan on a specific drug? Pharma guaranteeing the control of cholesterol?

The first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies launched 3 years ago, promising dramatic benefits. Patients now await the second cluster – including the novel technologies KTE-X19, lisocabtagene maraleucel, idecabtagene vicleucel and ciltacabtagene autoleucel – alongside the launch of KYMRIAH® and YESCARTA® into earlier lines of therapy.1 As consultants engaged with the first, we remember the vista of uncertainty: how do we robustly demonstrate to health technology assessment (HTA) bodies the expected value of these expensive interventions with only short-term, single-arm data as supportive evidence, the kind of data such bodies are typically so skeptical of? To paraphrase a team member, we were to ‘go where no one has gone before’.a As the second cluster approaches launch, we can claim no such excuse. Join us as we learn from past reviews from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), draw four implications for the future, and then pose four further questions for your consideration.

If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you may want to talk to your doctor about genomic testing. Genomic testing can identify biomarkers that may assist in identifying treatments that target the specific kind of cancer you have.

This episode of Medical Affairs Unscripted features Randi Goeckeler, an industry expert with over 25 years of experience and most recently the Executive Director of Global Stakeholder Relations at Allergan.