China is becoming a destination for U.S. patients seeking CAR-T cell therapy, according to a Sept. 6 report from The Wall Street Journal.
“China has basically done to CAR-T cell therapy the same thing that it’s done to other industries, which is, they’ve industrialized it,” Sairah Ahmed, MD, director of Houston-based University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s CAR-T program, told the Journal. Dr. Ahmed has advised some of her overseas patients to seek CAR-T therapy in China.
Since beginning to offer CAR-T therapy to international patients in 2023, the Shanghai SinoUnited Hospital has treated roughly three dozen patients from 12 countries, including patients from MD Anderson, Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic and Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins.
CAR-T therapy costs can range from $150,000 to $230,000 in China and from $550,000 to $850,000 in the U.S., according to the report.
Beyond cost, the Journal report highlights broad specialist care, smoother visa assistance and strong English-language service, plus the speed at which personalized cell therapies are produced by China’s private international hospitals as reasons for the uptick in overseas patients choosing China for CAR-T therapy.
The report follows an April 28 article published in the Harvard Business Review in which a group of leaders from New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford (Calif.) University outline the significant progress China has made in pharmaceutical research and development, and calls for academic medical centers to rethink their well-established model of drug discovery and development to stay competitive.
