Sophie Schmitz on the Importance of Considering Value of Gene Therapies, Not Just Cost

Video

Gene therapy provides an opportunity for every patient to become not a patient, to become an individual, and you can’t put a cost on that, explained Sophie Schmitz, BA, MA, managing partner, Partners4Access.

Gene therapy provides an opportunity for every patient to become not a patient, to become an individual, and you can’t put a cost on that, explained Sophie Schmitz, BA, MA, managing partner, Partners4Access.

Transcript

Why is it important for payers to keep in mind the value of high-cost gene therapies and not just their price?

The thing here with gene therapy, what we need to understand, is yes, they might seem costly, certainly at the outset, but we’re talking about therapies that impact a patient over the lifetime of their disease. I’d like to take hemophilia as an example, actually, of a disease which is obviously lifelong, and patients need to be very attuned to their disease to even be able to survive. If we look at that disease, the value to patient of not having to prophylactically take medicine, the value to a patient of having good bone health, and also, as well, the value to a patient of getting rid of the badge of that disease, is something that’s quite difficult to just value from a monetary perspective; it’s much bigger than that. I think gene therapy provides an opportunity for every patient to become not a patient, to become an individual, and you can’t put a cost on that.

Recent Videos
Matthew Ku, MBBS, FRACP, RACP, FRCPA/RCPA, PhD, an associate professor and the lymphoma stream lead at St Vincent’s Hospital
Saurabh Dahiya, MD, FACP, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine; as well as clinical director of Cancer Cell Therapy in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy at Stanford Medicine
Shahzad Raza, MD, a hematologist/oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic
Manali Kamdar, MD, the associate professor of medicine–hematology and clinical director of lymphoma services at the University of Colorado
Shahzad Raza, MD, a hematologist/oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic
Laura Aguilar MD, PhD, the chief medical officer of Diakonos Oncology
Jamie Jacobs, PhD, the program director of the center for psychiatric oncology & behavioral sciences at Mass General Cancer Center
Laura Aguilar MD, PhD, the chief medical officer of Diakonos Oncology
Sarah Hein, PhD, the chief executive officer and cofounder of March Biosciences
Brian Kim, MBA, the chief executive officer of Mission Bio
Related Content
© 2025 MJH Life Sciences

All rights reserved.