Kolkata's Command Hospital Gives Serving Soldier India's First Indigenous CAR-T Cell Therapy

Key facts

• Command Hospital (Eastern Command), Kolkata administered India's first indigenous CAR-T cell therapy, NexCAR19, to a 39-year-old serving soldier with relapsed/refractory B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.
• NexCAR19 was developed through collaboration among IIT Bombay, Tata Memorial Centre and the biotechnology start-up ImmunoACT.
• The therapy reprograms a patient's own T-cells with Chimeric Antigen Receptors to target CD19-expressing cancer cells, and its humanised configuration lowers the risk of severe neurological side effects.
• It is among the most affordable CAR-T therapies globally, costing roughly one-tenth of comparable Western treatments.
• In September, Command Hospital (Western Command), Chandimandir administered its first CAR-T therapy to a 16-year-old B-cell ALL patient.