From toxicity to immunity: Evaluating CAR-T and conventional therapies in multiple myeloma through quality-adjusted life year (QALY) outcomes

Description

Guluzar Gulnur Itez and Asuman Sunguroğlu weigh cell therapy against standard drug care for a blood cancer in a 2026 study. The cancer, multiple myeloma, comes back again and again, and each round adds cost and harm. The team built a model from 19 past trials and real-world groups with 7,793 patients. They compared care paths on life span, quality of life, cost, and harm load.

For patients who had many past rounds, CAR-T cell therapy near doubled both total and cancer-free life span next to other late plans. It also gave more quality-adjusted life years with less total burden. Some drug pairs worked well but cost near one million dollars per patient. A plain drug trio stayed the cheap pick for those who cannot have a transplant. Cost per quality year ran far high for late drug plans than for CAR-T in the model.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13542552