NORWALK, CT, Sept. 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — HR8912, the Access to Future Cures Act, was introduced to Congress on September 20, which aims to amend the Health Savings Account (HSA) and Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) to expand. and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) eligibility to include storage of blood or blood-derived biomaterial to enable future cell and gene therapy treatments.

Currently there is 25 FDA Approved Cell and Gene Therapy Products and thousands of clinical trials in development. Actually the The FDA has forecast 10 to 20 new approvals per year by 2025. As approvals continue to increase, so too will the promising results of cell therapy. For example, a patient with type 1 diabetes received successful treatment with a stem cell-derived pancreatic islet cell replacement therapy called VX-880. According to that Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the patient – who had been injection dependent since his diagnosis 40 years ago – had a significant recovery of his insulin-producing islet cells after receiving VX-880. This suggests that VX-880 and future cell therapies could eliminate the need for people with diabetes to continue using self-injectable insulin.

While many current therapies rely on donor cells, using your own biomaterial allows for better patient outcomes in precision medicine, and as cell health declines over time, your healthiest cells are the ones you have today.

“I applaud this Congress for considering the Access to Future Cures Act, which will give millions of Americans with flexible spending and health savings accounts access to quality preventative healthcare services,” said Chris Garcia, GoodCell chairman and CEO. “With promising cell therapies in development to treat serious chronic and debilitating diseases, the FSA and HSA eligibility for personal cell storage allows average Americans to store their healthy cells for access to future personalized therapies.”

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