Availability of Modified Cell Therapy Found to Reduce Health Care Disparities Among Blood Cancer Patients Across Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups in Analysis Group Study
April 25, 2024
A potentially curative therapy for patients with some blood cancers is the transplantation of healthy blood-forming cells taken from a donor. However, that therapy – allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) – is only available for certain patients due to a lack of matching bone marrow donors, a deficiency that is particularly acute among racial and ethnic minorities underrepresented in donor registries. To close this gap, a modified cell therapy (omidubicel-onlv) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in improving transplant outcomes, as compared to standard cord blood. Since omidubicel-onlv uses umbilical cord blood as its starting material, which is more widely available than bone marrow, the use of omidubicel-onlv has the potential to reduce transplant disparities across racial and ethnic groups.
To quantify the impact of broad access to omidubicel-onlv on disparities in allo-HCT patient care, Analysis Group Managing Principal James Signorovitch, Vice President Yan Song, and Manager Marie Louise Edwards coauthored an article with researchers from Gamida Cell, the Mayo Clinic, and Thomas Jefferson University. In the article, the authors model the disparate outcomes that allo-HCT patients can experience due to their race or ethnicity and suggest that widening access to omidubicel-onlv could help reduce those disparities. The authors conclude that “increased use of omidubicel-onlv in a large, diverse patient population could lead to improvements in transplant use and clinical outcomes, with the greatest benefits seen among racial and ethnic minorities.”
The article, “Projected Impact of Omidubicel-onlv on Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation (Allo-HCT) Outcomes in Hematologic Malignancies,” was published in Advances in Therapy.