Expanding CAR-T Therapy Access: A Collaboration between Boston and Cairo – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute shared a post on LinkedIn:
“In the U.S., CAR-T cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood leukemia. But the therapy is expensive, complex to manufacture, and managing the associated toxicities is challenging. In North America and Europe, national health services, health insurance, and other medical infrastructure help make it accessible.
“It’s a complicated thing,” says Leslie Lehmann, clinical director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program and a member of the Center for Global Health Equity. “The approach we follow here isn’t a good fit for low- and middle-income countries.”
There is, however, an alternative paradigm that could be appropriate in resource-limited places. In North Africa, the Children’s Cancer Hospital of Egypt is currently working to fund the purchase of novel technology to support the local manufacture and delivery of CAR-T cell therapy.
Lehmann, who has worked with the hospital in Cairo for more than a decade, will support training funded by the Center for Global Health Equity to prepare specialists to administer therapy and manage side effects.
“This Cairo team is purchasing technology so they can manufacture cell therapy like CAR-T cell therapy and possibly even gene therapy,” says Lehmann. “But to be successful, the teams in these places need the specialized training required to safely evaluate patients and tend to possible complications during the critical time after treatment.”
More than fifteen years ago, Lehmann and colleagues at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center began collaborating with the Children’s Cancer Hospital of Egypt. The Pediatric Oncology Fellowship was later established between the two to introduce modern educational and clinical practices.
The Cairo hospital, the world’s largest pediatric oncology hospital, runs solely on philanthropy and provides free care children with cancer. “This model has many benefits,” says Lehmann. “But it doesn’t easily support novel cell and gene therapies that have extremely high price tags.”
To address this, the hospital is considering an alternative to costly commercial therapies by manufacturing them locally at the “point of care.” “Fundraising for this ‘homemade CAR-T cell therapy’ approach is more attainable than trying to fundraise the cost of commercial therapy for each child that is eligible,” says Lehmann.
Lehmann proposed using funding secured by President and CEO Emerita Laurie Glimcher, to bring a team of three to four oncologists from Cairo to Boston for a ten-day training in managing CAR-T cell therapy side effects.
“These can be complicated relationships, but we have been working together for so long that we really have the trust and the communication essential for such an effort to be a success,” says Lehmann.”
-
Challenging the Status Quo in Colorectal Cancer 2024
December 6-8, 2024
-
ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
-
ASCO Annual Meeting
May 30 - June 4, 2024
-
Yvonne Award 2024
May 31, 2024
-
OncoThon 2024, Online
Feb. 15, 2024
-
Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023