[jsperx]

The article has a couple paragraphs about the complexity involved in fabrication and how labor intensive it is:

“Maus walked me through some of the steps needed to create CAR-T cells for the trial. We started with the room where the DNA instructions that are added to the T cell’s genome are written. […] We went on to the lentiviral-production room, where technicians create viral vectors carrying this DNA. From there, we moved to the tissue-culture room, where the vector is mixed with normal T cells to create the CAR-T. Finally, we visited the immune-monitoring part of the lab, where lab techs assay blood draws and other samples from patients, looking for proof that the CAR-T cells have made it to their targets.”

“Jennifer Wargo, a professor of genomic medicine at MD Anderson, referred to the cost of immunotherapy treatments as ‘financial toxicity.’ The patent for June’s CAR-T therapy for leukemia is owned by Novartis, and the median cost for the treatment is $620,000. Even if drug companies don’t try to profit from these therapies, the process is inherently labor-intensive: T cells have to be removed from the patient’s own blood, genetically altered, then reinfused. It’s difficult to determine where economies of scale might kick in.”

[robertlagrant]

Half of that second paragraph seems to not belong there. Why rebrand "expensive" as "financial toxicity"? Why is profit bad when companies' losses are fine? It seems very strange.

[littlestymaar]

Yeah, but that opens many more questions than it answers: this $620 000 figure cannot come out of labor intensity alone, as it represents the cost of thousands of work hours (literally a dozen of doctor full time for a month, or at least 50 well paid specialized technicians working for an entire month on each patient treatment) yet the process described in the text doesn't seem to match this level of labor.