Good Day BIO: The true cost of a sickle cell cure

The New York Times has an important read on the true cost of breakthrough sickle cell therapies—and it’s not what you think. Plus, we’re all getting sticker shock with our breakfast lately—here’s how biotech can help. (647 words, 3 minutes, 14 seconds)

The true cost of a sickle cell disease cure

The price of breakthrough gene therapies to treat and cure sickle cell disease (SCD) is much less than the lifetime medical costs of living with the disease, The New York Times highlights.

The raw numbers: Medical costs for people with sickle cell disease (SCD) averaged $1.7 million over the course of their lifetime, a recent study finds. Including non-medical bills, total costs per patient average $63,436 annually, another recent study says.

One family’s experience: Ashley Valentine, co-founder of the patient advocacy group Sick Cells, told The New York Times she had to take three months off work while her father gave up his job to care for her brother, Marqus, who had SCD; Marqus died in 2020 at age 36 from a stroke caused by SCD.

Many families’ experiences: SCD patients have to give up jobs because they can't go out, or move south to avoid the pain endured during cold winters.

But a cure is on the way—two, in fact, from BIO members Bluebird Bio and Vertex/CRISPR Therapeutics, which clinical trials have shown to eliminate patients’ blood of the “misshapen red cells.”

Why it matters: The gene therapies require hospitalization and can cost around $1 million—but that’s still far less than the cost of a lifetime with the disease.

Equity considerations: Sick Cells collaborated on a paper finding concerns of people with SCD, who are mostly Black and Latinx, are ignored during typical health technology assessments, Bio.News reported last year.

More Health News:

Moderna: Moderna RSV vaccine achieves primary efficacy endpoints in Phase 3 trial in older adults
Moderna yesterday “announced positive topline data from its ConquerRSV Phase 3 pivotal efficacy trial of mRNA-1345, an investigational mRNA vaccine targeting respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in older adults.” 

The New York Times: A better COVID winter
“Some of the worst days of COVID in the U.S. have come as winters have settled in, and surges led hospitals to overflow and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. A comparable surge has yet to materialize on a similar timeline this winter. By now, hospitalizations in particular would have started to sharply rise. Instead, data suggests that more of a COVID bump than a surge has emerged." 

How biotech can beef up our protein sources

With avian flu driving up the price of farmed fowl and eggs, biotech solutions grow more important.

Sticker shock with breakfast: Eggs cost more as bird flu becomes endemic, and China’s loss of half their hog herd to swine flu battered bacon prices, says a Washington Post op-ed, which calls for biotech alternatives like lab-grown meat.

What they’re saying (about avian flu): “They thought that they’d had it knocked out by fall,” economist Robert Frick tells Semafor. “It is very persistent. It is kind of like the COVID of avian flu. Just when you think it’s gone, it comes back in another variation.”

We have biotech solutions—like gene editing, which can allow us to develop birds resistant to avian flu and pigs resistant to deadly disease. And the animal biotech market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.

We’re also growing meat alternatives.UPSIDE Foods, which produces meat from animal cells cultivated in a lab, is getting close to FDA approval, said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf. The company says a cell line from one chicken can produce cultured meat for years, using less water and generating fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

But we need policy to advance biotech solutions, including improved regulatory approval pathways, as well as better consumer education.

President Biden’s Wednesday: No official activities scheduled.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: As the government approaches its debt limit, both House Republicans and President Biden are refusing to change their positions, POLITICO reports. The House and Senate are not in session today. ICYMI, Nirav D. Shah, Director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has been appointed Principal Deputy Director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).