People with advanced lymphoma currently have another type of treatment to consider. The Food and Drug Administration has approved Yescarta, a cell-based gene therapy designed to treat giant B-cell lymphoma created by Kite pharma. it is the second time the FDA has approved a gene therapy for use within the us following a procedure meant to treat leukemia earlier this year.
The therapy requires a patient’s T-Cells, one type of white blood cells, to be harvested and modified. These engineered cells ar designed to be attracted to a certain protein in tumor cells in order to kill them. due to the complex nature of the procedure, a healthcare professional will have to go through training to be able to administer the pricey treatment — The Wall Street Journal says it’ll price patients around $373,000.
Kite pharma conducted a multicenter clinical trial involving a hundred and one adults with relapsed large B-cell lymphoma to convince the FDA to give the therapy its approval. The tumors in 72 % of the test subjects shrunk and even disappeared completely in 51 % of the subjects. Despite being effective, the therapy will only be used if a patient has relapsed or failed to respond to at least 2 different kinds of treatment. that is because Yescarta could cause pretty severe and life-threatening side effects, including anemia and low white somatic cell counts. The worst possible reaction to the therapy? It’s none other than death: according to The WSJ, Kite pharma determined that the deaths of 2 of its test subjects were related to the treatment.
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Source:engadget.com
