What Dr Zahra Mahmoudjafari Wishes Payers Knew About CAR T-Cell Therapies

Zahra Mahmoudjafari, PharmD, BCOP, clinical pharmacy manager of hematology, bone marrow therapy, and cellular therapeutics at the University of Kansas Health System, gives her take on what payers should keep in mind when dealing with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies.

Transcript

What do you wish that more payers understood about CAR T therapies?

CAR T therapies fall under a new line of care called immune effector cell therapies and they are here to stay. They're very scientifically exciting, but I think operationally and logistically pretty challenging. I think what I would like payers to know is that while they are scientifically very, very exciting, we're still learning a lot about them and we are improving care every single day, whether it's through the different ways we select our patients or how we prioritize care.

And then additionally, I think I'd like payers to know specifically with the CAR T therapies at this time point, time is of the essence and these patients' [cases] are relapsed and refractory. And right now, our CAR T products are manufactured over the course of 3 to 4 to even 5 weeks and many times those patients don't have that kind of time. So, any delay is very impactful in their care.