Opinion: Letting academic medical centers make CAR-T drugs would save billions

Draw blood from someone with cancer. Engineer their blood cells to seek and destroy cancer. Reinfuse the cells and watch the cancer melt away. Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) sounds like science fiction. But it’s the next frontier in cancer therapy.

We’re weaponizing individuals’ immune systems to destroy cancer and add years to their lives. It’s incredibly exciting. But at hundreds of thousands of dollars per dose, insurance companies and the U.S. government are struggling to figure out how to for these breakthrough treatments.