Brazil aims to manufacture its own cell therapies — at a fraction of the current cost

Brazil’s Min­istry of Health is work­ing with a US non­prof­it to lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­ture CAR-T ther­a­pies and po­ten­tial­ly oth­er cell and gene ther­a­pies at a much low­er cost.

The goal is to pro­vide cell ther­a­py free of charge to pa­tients while charg­ing Brazil’s health sys­tem around $35,000 a dose, which is rough­ly one-tenth of the cost in Eu­rope and an even small­er frac­tion of US costs.

CAR-T ther­a­pies have trans­formed the treat­ment of cer­tain blood can­cers, but a course of treat­ment can cost near­ly $500,000 in the US, and wide­spread ac­cess has been plagued by lim­it­ed sup­ply and com­plex man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es.

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