Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Medicines Strategy: Discussion

Dr. Kieran Harkin:

I am not aware that there are and I would imagine it is quite flexible. One of the problems of the future is the unknowns. The new CAR T-cell therapies for cancer, which the Deputy mentioned, are being designed initially to treat a limited number of conditions, particularly leukaemias and certain forms of lymphoma, but the expectation is that, as the research continues, the indications will expand and therapy will be able to treat more common conditions such as breast, colon or lung cancer. If the price tag of $475,000 is attached to all of those conditions, the sky is the limit as to how much money could effectively be spent on the drugs.

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