Celyad Ocology has voluntarily paused a clinical study evaluating its off-the-shelf CAR T-cell therapy in colorectal cancer following the report of two patient deaths. The investigation is ongoing, but the company said that both patients exhibited “similar pulmonary findings.”
In a recent interview, executives from two early-stage biopharma companies said that off-the-shelf approach is the only way to drive down the cost of novel cell and gene therapies like CAR-T.
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Allogeneic CAR-Ts could serve an important niche - particularly for patients who can't receive autologous CAR-Ts - but the earliness of the data makes conclusions tough to draw.