(Yicai) Dec. 8 -- China introduced its first Commercial Health Insurance Innovative Drug List that includes five chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapies, which re-engineer a patient's own white blood cells to recognize and attack cancer, marking a significant step in building a multi-tiered medical insurance system.

Only 19 drugs made the list after 121 passed formal review and 24 entered price negotiations, the National Healthcare Security Administration announced at the High-Quality Development Conference on Innovative Drugs in Guangzhou on Dec. 7. The new catalog will take effect from Jan. 1.

Cancer drugs dominate the list with 14 selections, while Alzheimer's disease treatments targeting the aging population and therapies for rare diseases predominantly affecting children, including Gaucher disease and neuroblastoma, were also included.

Unlike the national medical insurance drug list, the commercial list highlights innovation and cutting-edge treatments, analysts noted. While the basic health insurance adheres to fundamental coverage principles, focusing on safe, proven drugs with mature mechanisms, the commercial one targets highly innovative drugs with significant clinical value that fall outside the basic coverage, they added.

The selected drugs represent outstanding achievements in recent pharmaceutical technology progress, including popular targeted therapies such as CAR-T, T-cell engagers, and bispecific antibodies. The five CAR-T-cell therapies primarily used for treating hematologic malignancies were developed by Fosun Kite, JW Therapeutics, Gracell Biotechnologies, Legend Biotech, and CARsgen Therapeutics, accounting for over half of those eight products approved in China.

Except for Gracell Biotech's CAR-T-cell therapy priced at CNY999,000 (USD141,300) per infusion, the other four cost more than CNY1 million, with JW Therapeutics' product reaching CNY1.3 million (USD183,875) per infusion.

The process from initial contact to getting selected for the list took nearly a year, Lu Lulu, founder and chief executive of Gracell Biotech, told Yicai. As commercial insurance coverage expands, improved payment capacity and accumulated clinical experience will create a virtuous cycle that helps bring these drugs to lower-tier markets, she pointed out.

The commercial insurance negotiation mechanism is a significant milestone for innovative drug accessibility in China, according to Zhang Wenjie, chairman of Fosun Kite. Following its inclusion, the company will deepen cooperation with health insurance institutions to integrate the drug into more local benefit insurance products and explore connections between benefit reimbursement and basic medical insurance, Zhang said.

The inclusion of five CAR-T therapies in the national commercial insurance innovative drug list means the Chinese government has established a sustainable and predictable market access pathway for high-value and even "sky-high priced" drugs, providing an authoritative drug reference list for all commercial health insurers nationwide, Xia Sujian, a researcher at Jinan University, said to Yicai.

Editor: Martin Kadiev