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Cancer therapy approved by FDA uses body’s own cells as a ‘living drug’ (www.washingtonpost.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Cancer therapy approved by FDA uses body’s own cells as a ‘living drug’::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Iovance Biotherapeutics has priced the therapy, branded Amtagvi, at $515,000 per patient.

Well thank goodness these kind souls made it so affordable. And im sure it will come down in price after its really proven to be effective right?

I'm sure the RnD for this was expensive af but ffs man, even with insurance thats probably going to be out of reach for so many people.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Charging people for their own cells, too!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pretty close to Michael Crichton's book "Next". Without the persons consent, they steal the cell line of someone who's cells naturally fight off cancer, create a cancer fighting drug, and then patent it, so the company legally owns that persons cells, and has a legal right to them with or without the person's consent.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Henrietta Lacks has entered the chat . . .

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Huh, TIL.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Cool technology but “living drug” is the dumbest possible analogy here.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

But an excellent band name. Imagine "chemo for the soul" by Living Drugs, feat. 4skin

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Something, something, technology indistinguishable from magic, something, education funding, something, something.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

To be fair, that is a direct quote taken from one of the researchers:

“The concept that the FDA has now acknowledged is that you can use a patient’s own cells as a living drug to treat their disease, and that to me is a very exciting step forward,” said Steve Rosenberg, a senior investigator for the National Cancer Institute who has helped pioneer the newly approved therapy since the 1980s.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Non paywall linky:

https://archive.ph/vA5rS

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This sounds a lot like CAR-T therapy, but for solid tumors? Cool

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

In CAR-T they are actually altering your cells but this therapy sounds like they are just relying on finding the right immune cell and amplifying it. Similar approaches to the same outcome.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

After undergoing surgery, radiation and three different therapies, Scott Goedeke faced a tough reality: The cancer that first surfaced on the roof of his mouth had spread to a lymph node in his neck.

On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its use to treat adults with a skin cancer like Goedeke’s — melanoma that has spread or can’t be removed with surgery, after other approaches have failed.

Shares of Iovance Biotherapeutics, the California-based company that makes the therapy, surged more than 30 percent on Tuesday, the first full day of trading following the FDA’s approval.

“The concept that the FDA has now acknowledged is that you can use a patient’s own cells as a living drug to treat their disease, and that to me is a very exciting step forward,” said Steve Rosenberg, a senior investigator for the National Cancer Institute who has helped pioneer the newly approved therapy since the 1980s.

The new individualized therapy, called tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, enlists the relatively small number of the body’s T cells that see a tumor as a threat and produces a lab-grown army of them.

The FDA action is also a signal to the pharmaceutical industry that there is a commercial path to success, said Jason Bock, chief executive of CTMC, a company spun out of MD Anderson Cancer Center that contracts with biotech firms to help manufacture cell therapies.

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