During this segment, Daniel J. George, MD, and Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, explore recently approved immunotherapy agents for the treatment of cancer.
Dr George briefly explains how sipuleucel-T and ipilimumab utilize the body’s immune system to fight disease. Dr George continues by explaining how these agents have demonstrated improvements in survival for patients with prostate cancer and melanoma. Furthermore, when looking at the expensive costs of treatment, the benefits make therapy more of an “investment” than an expense.
Dr Weber explains that sipuleucel-T is a vaccine, while ipilimumab is a checkpoint protein inhibitor. Then, he discusses the differences between these agents and how they work.
As Dr George and Dr Weber examine the safety profiles of each of these treatment options, the doctors address the importance of managing corresponding treatment side effects and adverse events, and recognize the need to control the high costs of treatment.
Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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