The FDA just approved another revolutionary cancer treatment.
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A cancer treatment that's part of 'a big new field of medicine' just got approved (GILD)
The treatment, called Yescarta, treats a type of blood cancer called aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The CAR T-cell therapy made by Kite Pharma, a company that in August was acquired by biotech giant Gilead Sciences.
Yescarta isn't your run-of-the-mill pill — or even a biologic drug, like insulin — that can be mass produced. Since the therapy is made from a person's own immune system, the process can take about three weeks.
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A big new field of medicine
Kymriah, and Yescarta are the first two CAR-T cell therapies to get approved, and several more are in the works. Juno Therapeutics, and Bluebird Bioare among a growing group of biotech companies working with CAR-T.
"We're at the very beginning of what's going to be a big new field of medicine," said David Epstein, who helped license Kymriah from the University of Pennsylvania while at Novartis.
Epstein left Novartis in 2016 as CEO of its pharmaceuticals divisions. He's now the executive chairman of Rubius Therapeutics, a biotech firm that's also working with cell therapy to develop treatments like Kymriah that don't have to be as personalized. The hope is that one day doctors will be able to prescribe a cell therapy and use it that same day instead of waiting weeks to get it back, and possibly extend beyond the blood cancers treatments like Kymriah and axi-cel are able to treat.
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