Factors Associated with Costs in Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy for Patients with Relapsed/Refractory B-Cell Malignancies

BACKGROUND: Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-Ts) constitute a novel therapeutic strategy for relapsed/refractory B-cell malignancies. CAR-T therapy has been extensively applied in the clinical setting; however, few systematic studies have evaluated the cost of CAR-T treatment. This study was conducted to evaluate the total cost and cost structure of CAR-T therapy and identify potential risk factors leading to increased costs. METHODS: We identified the associated risk factors in 89 patients in a phase 1/2 study. The cohort included patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL, n = 55) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL, n = 34). RESULTS: Overall, the treatment of the ALL cohort was costlier than that of the NHL cohort (P < 0.001). Furthermore, in the ALL cohort, it was costlier to treat patients with a high tumor burden (P < 0.001), high cytokine release syndrome (CRS) grade (P < 0.001), and complications of infection after CAR-T cell infusion (CTI) in the whole cohort (P = 0.013) than patients with a low tumor burden, with low CRS grade, and without infection, respectively. CRS grade and length of stay (P ≤ 0.005) were independent risk factors associated with the total cost in both the ALL and NHL cohorts during CAR-T therapy. A high tumor burden, duration of fever, and treatment with tocilizumab were independent risk factors associated with the total cost in the ALL cohort (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: CAR-T treatment should be extended to patients with a low tumor burden or patients in a state of complete remission, and a corticosteroid approach, as opposed to tocilizumab, may reduce costs.