Jim Schwartz Discusses How His Practice Will Handle Using CAR T-Cell Treatments

Jim Schwartz, RPh, president of the National Community Oncology Dispensing Association and executive director of pharmacy operations for Texas Oncology, discusses how his practice will handle using CAR T-cell therapies to treat patients.

Transcript

Are you currently using CAR T therapies at your practice?

CAR T therapy: we are going to be doing CAR T therapy. Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, along with our Texas Oncology physicians, who will be the physicians doing it, are going to do both the Novartis CAR T and [Kite] Pharmaceuticals’ CAR T. So, we’ve had a lot of discussions with them, a lot of meetings. It’ll probably be done in the hospital, inpatient. It’s very expensive, and the people in my practice said, “We’re happy to have Baylor put up the money,” but our doctors will be treating [patients with CAR T therapies].

Are you involved in how to prepare for handling the toxicities of CAR T therapies?

Not intimately, but I’ve got an excellent pharmacist in the bone marrow transplant unit. I went and met with him and he told me more about CAR T than I got on any of the calls. He will be involved in managing—he’s on the outpatient side, but he also helps them on the inpatient side.

So, one of our Texas Oncology pharmacists is going to be involved in that to help monitor the inpatient, because there won’t be a lot of patients, but there will patients that need to be monitored very carefully. That’s why they want to stay in the hospital—it may not happen right away, it may take 2 or 3 days, and he’s part of the group that’s making the care plans. You know, “Once it’s done, here’s what we’re going to watch.”