For decades, lots of American patients have been traveling to “fringe” countries like Turkey, Cuba and Thailand in search of affordable, quality healthcare due to the persistent challenges plaguing the American health care system. Now the latest destination of choice for cancer treatment is China, according to a report by the WSJ (Wall Street Journal).
CAR-T therapy, a new type of cancer treatment that bioengineers immune cells of a cancer patient in order to make them more potent against cancer, was developed in the U.S. However, the high cost of this treatment, together with the lengthy process of engineering the cells, has pushed patients to fly out to China for the same treatment.
China has taken this biotech innovation and mastered it to the extent that it can offer the same treatment more quickly and at a much lower cost compared to how it is done in the U.S.
Estimates indicate that U.S. specialists require several weeks to prepare the bioengineered immune cells before they are ready for reintroduction into the patient from whom immune cells had been extracted for processing. In China, this process takes just a few days.
In terms of cost, China again beats the U.S. hands down. American cancer facilities charge between $550,000 and $850,000 for CAR-T therapy. In China, the cost ranges between $150,000 and $230,000. The treatment package in China also comes with generous post-treatment benefits to support the patient during the recovery period after the treatment has been administered.
You can see why many cancer patients are opting to go to China to access this life-changing treatment. The caveat for CAR-T therapy is that not all cancers can be treated using this method, and not all patients with cancers that respond to this therapy qualify to undergo it.
You may be wondering: Why is a treatment that was developed in the U.S. so expensive in the country and yet the same therapy is a lot cheaper in China? Well, the health care crisis in the U.S. manifests in various ways, and one of them is the inexplicably high cost of prescription medicines relative to the cost of the same medicines in other developed countries. This same challenge afflicts advanced cancer treatments like CAR-T therapy.
For firms like Calidi Biotherapeutics Inc. (NYSE American: CLDI) that are also conducting R&D programs aimed at commercializing the next wave of immunotherapies, affordability is a major concern because it may not be helpful to commercialize a treatment that only a handful of patients can afford.
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