Some of the top university hospitals in Switzerland are teaming up to offer cancer treatments to patients at one-third the cost of the commercialized process offered by Big Pharma, according to Bloomberg.
The hospitals are working to offer cancer cell therapy at a cost ranging from $151,280 to $201,710. Commercialized cancer cell therapy can cost more than $300,000.
Under the commercial cancer cell therapy process, a patient's blood is drawn, and certain immune cells are taken to a laboratory to be modified. The cells are then injected back into the patient. The idea is that the immune cells target and destroy cancer cells.
The Swiss university hospitals plan to cut the costs of the therapy by processing and treating the cells in-house instead of sending them abroad for processing.
According to the report, Swiss drug giant Novartis sends blood to Germany for processing and Gilead sends cells to the U.S.
"We are convinced that such cancer therapies can be realized at significantly lower costs," Roger von Moos, president of the Swiss Association for Clinical Cancer Research and head physician at the Chur Cantonal Hospital, told Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.