An international coalition wants to double the proportion of eligible patients treated with CAR T-cell therapy by 2030.
Only three out of ten people in Europe and two out of ten people in the US with certain rare, advanced blood cancers receive access to CAR T-cell therapy.
An international coalition has launched CAR T Vision to unite stakeholders around the shared ambition that every eligible patient should have the opportunity for a cure with CAR T-cell therapy. By 2030, the aim is to double the proportion of eligible patients treated with CAR T-cell therapy.
The coalition will work to address access challenges and drive meaningful change in the CAR T-cell therapy healthcare ecosystem with a focus on three priorities: increasing awareness and understanding of CAR T-cell therapy; expanding resources and capacity to deliver CAR T-cell therapy; and developing sustainable and innovative financing approaches to manage the costs of treatment and care.
“Despite CAR T-cell therapy being available in the US for nearly seven years in large b-cell lymphoma, only approximately two out of ten eligible patients with some advanced blood cancers ever receive CAR T-cell therapy,” said Miguel Perales, CAR T Vision steering committee co-chair. “When it comes to treating these potentially deadly cancers, every minute counts. That is why we established CAR T Vision with recommendations for interventions that, when adopted and scaled, will help many more eligible patients get the opportunity for cure within the next five years.”
Limited awareness
The roadmap report has been developed by an independent steering committee made up of leaders from top North American and European patient advocacy groups, medical society organisations, academic and community treatment centres, health technology assessment, policy, and other subject matter experts.
Expert working groups will now be established to translate the vision into concrete, measurable actions, including specific recommendations and a measurement framework to track progress.
CAR T-cell therapy involves engineering a person’s own immune cells to target and treat cancer and is currently approved for certain types of aggressive blood cancers, enabling some patients to remain cancer-free for more than five years.
“Limited awareness of CAR T-cell therapy, low referrals, hospital capacity challenges and funding and reimbursement are among the barriers that either prevent people from accessing CAR T-cell therapy altogether or cause delays that advance a patient’s cancer beyond the point of treatment eligibility. In short, these barriers cost lives,” said Anna Sureda, CAR T Vision steering committee co-chair.
