Will I have to mortgage my house? Reflections on gene therapy, innovation, and inequality in the USA

The first FDA-approved gene therapy, Kymriah, was released to the public in August 2017 with a $475,000 price tag. With the emergence of personalized genetic medicine, we are entering a new era of profound inequality. This talk explores the stories of children and parents who signed up for the Kymriah clinical trial before it was approved—risking their lives and household finances in pursuit of a cancer cure. Issues of race and class played out at Penn Medicine, as researchers explored new horizons of hope with living cellular therapies.