Asembia ASX26: Payers and the Rising Costs for Cell & Gene Therapies

While advances in cell & gene therapy continue to show promise for creating new treatments, this sector of the industry still faces a major hurdle: the high costs. Whether it’s on the R&D side or delivering and administering the treatment to the patients, cell& gene therapies are expensive.

Pharmaceutical Executive spoke with Aradigm Health CEO Will Shrank at the Asembia ASX26 Summit in Las Vegas. During the conversation, he explained the issues the payers face with cell & gene therapies, along with the strategies that the industry is using to move forward with these treatments.

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Pharmaceutical Executive: How can payers overcome the rising costs for cell & gene therapies?
Will Shrank: This is a real challenge for payers, even the big payers and massive employers. The volume that you need (the number of patients, members, or employees) to be able to accurately predict cost and manage the risk is enormous because of the volatility, spikiness, and unpredictability.

It's hard for any payer or self-insured employer to address the breadth of these ecosystem challenges on their own. Ultimately, this really calls for a moment of collective action, a moment where by participating together, the industry can create a lot more scale and leverage.

With broader risk pooling, you can really smooth out the risk and create much more predictability. And ultimately, you have the scale to be able to cut to partner more progressively and more creatively with providers and manufacturers, and really deliver a more affordable, sustainable product.