President Droupadi Murmu on April 4 launched India’s first indigenously-developed CAR T-cell therapy for treatment of cancer. Developed by the IIT Bombay and the Tata Memorial Centre, this gene-based therapy will help in curing different types of cancer.
- This NexCAR19 CAR T-cell therapy is the country’s first ‘Made in India’ CAR T-cell therapy, which will significantly bring down the cost of cancer treatment.
- NexCAR19 has been rolled out at approximately one-tenth of the price at which it is available outside India.
- The treatment costs approximately ₹4 crore abroad.
CAR-T cell therapy
- Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy involves modifying a patient’s T cells (a type of immune system cell) in the laboratory and using them to attack and destroy cancer cells.
- A type of treatment in which a patient’s T cells (a type of immune system cell) are changed in the laboratory so they will attack cancer cells.
- T cells are taken from a patient’s blood. Then the gene for a special receptor that binds to a certain protein on the patient’s cancer cells is added to the T cells in the laboratory.
- The special receptor is called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). Large numbers of the CAR T cells are grown in the laboratory and given to the patient by infusion.
- CAR T-cell therapy is used to treat certain blood cancers, and it is being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer.
- However, there are major limitations to CAR-T cell therapy that still must be addressed including life-threatening CAR-T cell-associated toxicities, limited efficacy against solid tumors, inhibition and resistance in B cell malignancies,
