What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi • Hacker News Board

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#21

Post by PNewling » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #20

Hate to be that guy, but which public companies are likely to benefit financially from the success of these therapies?

I'm not sure what are you trying to really ask...

What companies would benefit from this? All of the larger pharma ones, basically. A large portion of the larger pharma companies have made large investments into the CAR-T space. A company that was spun out of Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center (I used to work there, not in CAR-T though), Juno Therapeutics, was purchased by Bristol Meyer Squibb. Another company in this space, Kite Pharma, was purchased by Gilead Sciences in response to this. And those are just the two off the top of my head that have made large investments.

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#22

Post by dghughes » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

Is this similar to Personalized OncoGenomics aka POG? I speed read it but it's near 1am here so I'm a big foggy brained.

https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/everything-you-ne...

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#23

Post by asimpleusecase » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 5:54 AM UTC

I have a child who was treated for ALL. As I researching the history of it I felt I was living in the time of Science Fiction. A generation or two before there was no treatment and with my child they were doing very specific genetic tests to tune chemo treatment levels to his specific version of ALL. We spent a couple of months in the paediatric oncology ward, 70% of his cohort (mixed cancers) in the ward did not survive his 3 year treatment cycle. My sister-in-law had stage 4 melanoma with 6 months or less prognosis. She was entered into an immunotherapy trial. 8 years later she is great. However, she was the only one out of 6 who survived in her trial. I don’t know all the details but all others withdrew - it was not a fun ride.

It is truly an amazing time.

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#24

Post by konschubert » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 8:19 AM UTC

snitty wrote: post #15

I just want to emphasize that, currently, CAR-T therapies are not particularly effective for solid tumors, which make up the majority of cancer diagnoses. They're currently only good for leukemias and lymphomas. They're also not the first line of treatment, because they have to be genetically engineered from your own cells, and then reinjected into you. There's been some progress in CAR-NK therapies, which would be "…

Is there any reason why the price for personalised CAR-T therapies couldn't come down dramatically? Just like the price of genome sequencing has come down?

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#25

Post by speleding » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:38 AM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #24

snitty wrote: post #15

I just want to emphasize that, currently, CAR-T therapies are not particularly effective for solid tumors, which make up the majority of cancer diagnoses. They're currently only good for leukemias and lymphomas. They're also not the first line of treatment, because they have to be genetically engineered from your own cells, and then reinjected into you. There's been some progress in CAR-NK therapies, which would be "…

Is there any reason why the price for personalised CAR-T therapies couldn't come down dramatically? Just like the price of genome sequencing has come down?

I'm curious as well. The article mentions $300,000 for a treatment. Can anybody give a rough breakdown of where that money goes? How much is labour / ingredients / profit?

Re: What we are doing today with CAR-T cell therapy against cancer seems like SciFi

#26

Post by panabee » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 6:31 AM UTC

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #13

panabee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you mind sharing what you think are the largest bottlenecks to (1) 24-hr turnaround and (2) CAR-T therapy for < $10K?

I think that's near impossible to achieve with an autologous product. To meet those two goals I think you'd need to have an allogenic product manufactured and QCd in advance in a large batch, which you could thaw and infuse on demand. The problem with that approach is histocompatibility (HLA) matching, but several companies are working on that.

thanks for sharing. this is such an impactful space. hopefully someone one day can lower the cost to $10K or ideally $1K.