CAR-T Therapy to Become Available in Russia Through Health Insurance

Russia's Ministry of Health plans to include CAR-T therapy (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy) in mandatory health insurance coverage by 2026. The coverage will apply to treating CD19-positive B-cell malignancies in adults. This would make Russia one of the few countries where the state healthcare system covers CAR-T treatment, not just patients' personal funds and charitable foundations. The move will make the treatment accessible to a wider population.

Источник фото: freepik.com

Clinics will receive a proposed reimbursement of 6.77 million rubles. This covers both producing the personalized CAR-T product and providing post-infusion patient care. According to the draft plan, adult patients can receive treatment if they have relapsed or refractory forms of the following diseases:

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
Other B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas

This patient profile matches the CAR-T product Utzhefra that the National Medical Research Center for Hematology is developing. The center plans to scale up production to 600 individualized treatments per year.

Russia currently registers and occasionally uses the commercial CAR-T product Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) from Swiss company Novartis. However, major federal medical centers are creating or testing most CAR-T therapies. The Dmitry Rogachev National Medical Research Center of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology has the most extensive clinical experience with cellular therapy. This center has produced and administered academic CAR-T formulations for treating children since 2018.

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