LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Unusually high numbers of U.S. lymphoma patients are choosing experimental treatments over expensive cell therapies sold by Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O) and Novartis AG (NOVN.S), new data shows, helping explain why sales of the two products have not met rosy expectations.
Both Gilead’s Yescarta and Novartis’s Kymriah – which are part of a class of therapies known in the medical field as “CAR-T” – were approved in 2017. But government and private health plans have balked at their high price of at least $373,000 for a one-time treatment before hospital costs, which can bring the bill for a single patient to over a million dollars.
Sales of both CAR-Ts – billed as potential blockbusters at their launch – have been slow to ramp up. In the second quarter, Novartis, which has struggled to meet U.S. manufacturing specifications, posted $58 million in Kymriah sales, while Gilead reported Yescarta sales of $120 million.
The novel treatments take immune…
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