Gene and cell therapies are very effective against blood cancers but are expensive. Scientists are therefore seeking to achieve public production, to make the cost of these treatments more sustainable.
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Nearly 40,000 oncologists from around the world will meet on Friday May 31 in Chicago at the Asco (American Society Of Clinical Oncology) congress. For five days, they will discuss innovative treatments against cancer, while the WHO predicts a 77% increase in cases worldwide by 2050 and more than 400,000 new cases of cancer have been detected in France. last year.
Among these innovative treatments, gene and cell therapies: they work miracles against blood cancers but are very expensive. Hence the idea of public production to make these drugs more affordable.
They are formidable tumor killers and are called CAR-T cells. These are white blood cells taken from the patient, then genetically modified in the laboratory where their DNA is reprogrammed to spot and kill cancer cells. These CAR-T cells are then reinjected into the patient’s body; this works very well against blood cancers.
The problem is that it is very expensive. Hematologist François Guilhot did the math in a report from the Academy of Medicine. “It is estimated that there are a little more than 1,000 patients per year who are treated with CAR-T cells, 300,000 euros on average per infusion. We can imagine what this will cost the French State”, he explains. The State has already spent 1.2 billion euros to buy CAR-T cells from the pharmaceutical industry, but the game is worth it since these new therapies make it possible to save patients for whom no other exists. treatment. The idea would therefore be to manufacture these CAR-T cells in the public domain.
In France, several teams of researchers are on a war footing in Paris, Lille and Besançon, within the French Blood Establishment. Two scientists, Christophe Ferrand and Marina Deschamps, had to set up a start-up to raise funds. They hope to launch a clinical trial soon to test their treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. “We are very late in France. We have zero CAR-T cells from French academic research which has been in phase 1 clinical trials. Ours will be the first. We cannot overcome what we called ‘the valley of death’: moving from academic research to clinical trials and eventual commercialization”explains Christophe Ferrand.
“We can’t do it, not because we’re not good! It’s just because there’s no risk-taking in investing.”
Marina Deschampsat franceinfo
“At the level of the State and public structures there is no such risk-taking, we cannot invest if we are not sure that it will work. Except that we want to tell them that we are in innovation! If we know that it works, it is no longer innovation, it has been tested before”adds Marina Deschamps.
In France there is another obstacle: public hospitals do not have the right to produce a drug for sale. This is not the case in Spain, where Julio Delgado succeeded in manufacturing 100% public CAR-T cells at an unbeatable price: 90,000 euros per injection, almost four times cheaper than those from private laboratories. His recipe: he first copied a treatment that already existed but without having to pay salespeople, advertising and shareholders as manufacturers do.
“We had to change our mentality. Our goal was not to improve a treatment or innovate, but rather to copy what pharmaceutical companies do.”
Julio Delgado, Spanish researcherat franceinfo
“We were lucky to have our own monoclonal antibody to make our CAR-T cells and no one could come and ask us for royalties for a patent,” explains Julio Delgado. Now that his drug has been approved in Spain and is treating thousands of people, the Spanish researcher has launched into innovation: he wants to develop CAR-T cells to fight against breast cancer. This is the next revolution: using this gene and cell therapy against solid cancers and autoimmune diseases.