Cancer Cure News 2017: FDA Approves Another Gene Modification Treatment
After the remarkable success of the first gene therapy regimen aimed at fighting cancer, the Food and Drug Administration has adopted a more favorable stance to this class of treatments. The agency has approved a second, similar therapy last Wednesday, Oct. 18.
The new therapy called Yescarta, which is about to be produced commercially by Kite Pharma, is prescribed for adult patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a particularly deadly form of blood cancer. The new treatment is a last recourse for patients who already had two failed courses of chemotherapy.
Like the first gene-altering treatment that was unanimously endorsed by the FDA, Yescarta also modifies the cells from the patient's immune system, making them more aggressive and effective at finding and killing cancer cells.
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The results have been impressive so far, with early trials leading to cases of cancer going into remissions. The therapy, like other cutting-edge regimens, costs a lot and will have to be custom made for each and every patient. Yescarta, for example, costs around $373,000 for a single dose.
Fortunately, only one treatment has to be given for a run. It's well worth it for patients that "don't have other options," as Dr. Frederick L. Locke, a specialist in blood cancers at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, described the target patients for the new therapy.
"The results are pretty remarkable," he noted. "We're excited. We think there are many patients who may need this therapy," he said, referring to the 3,500 people a year that could be saved by Yescarta where other traditional therapies have failed.
"Today marks another milestone in the development of a whole new scientific paradigm for the treatment of serious diseases," F.D.A. commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
"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," he added, as quoted by the New York Times.
