Go fly a KITE.

Last week we touched on some pharmaceutical wins for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but a few days later came the real pay day: the FDA approved the second CAR-T cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel (or Yescarta, short for “say YES to CAR-T cells Ah!”). This time it’s for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) instead of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and granted to KITE Pharma instead of Novartis. Yes, the results in some patients are truly miraculous, and this is certainly worth celebrating. But for every heart-warming anecdote, there are two patients who will receive the $373,000 treatment with no substantial benefit. So, considering the number needed to treat, the real cost of delivering Yescarta to achieve a 9-month benefit in one patient surpasses an epic one million dollars...and that cost is for the cells alone. Americans are loathe to put a price tag on human life, but at some point we’ll have to tell Big Pharma (and their outrageous price points) to go fly a kite.