Cardinal Health’s Aklilu Tedla on CAR T-Cell Administration Outside of the Hospital

Moving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies outside of the hospital will bring training and safety challenges, said Aklilu Tedla, vice president, insights and engagement, regulatory science, cell and gene, Cardinal Health.

Transcript

What are the benefits and challenges of trying to move CAR T-cell therapy administration to outside of the hospital?

Number one, is safety. Right? How do you ensure safety? When these therapies are administered, there's a period of time to monitor, and in the acute setting, for example, you have the infrastructure there. So that's one question, right?

Two, is how do you train the community setting to administer and also ensure the safety aspects of that, right? And this is actually something we're engaging with thought leaders on, on what is actually going to be needed to think up to deliver treatment out of the hospital setting. A lot of oncologists, for example, want to treat their own patients. They're doing it today and with CAR Ts, they want to continue to do that tomorrow. So, you have to think about certifying these sites, right? How do you get the right certification so that all of the aspects of drug delivery, safety, patient monitoring are met.