Comment on FDA approves cure for sickle cell disease, the first treatment to use CRISPR
themurphy@lemmy.world 11 months agoGuess we’ll have to wait until this is approved in other countries for a real answer.
Hard to know the price in other countries when it’s free, eh?
krellor@kbin.social 11 months ago
Just because they don't issue a bill doesn't mean they don't track costs. They track labor, labor rates, and consumables.
That said, this particular treatment is very involved. They harvest cells over multiple periods, send them to a lab to be modified, and when they are ready they do chemotherapy to kill your immune system, then do a bone marrow transplant to introduce the modified cells, and then you have to be in isolation in a hospital until your immune system comes back. Even the best facilities are saying they can only do 5-10 of these per year.
Pretty crazy.
Flipper@feddit.de 11 months ago
It’s also wild that the first step of the treatment is chemotherapy.