CAR-T therapy can be safely manufactured at hospital, finds CMR-funded trial led by CMC Vellore

AN ICMR-funded trial led by CMC Vellore demonstrated that CAR-T therapy, which uses a patient's own T cells to fight cancer, can be safely manufactured at the hospital and infused to treat patients in India at a low cost.

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For the first time, these CAR-T cells were produced and infused in a hospital in India.

CMC Vellore director and principal author of the study Dr Vikram Mathews explained that Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells) are normal T-cells that are part of the patient's own immune system.

In CART-T cell therapy, these cells are engineered to recognize and target the specific cancer cell, thus using the immune system to fight the disease. CAR-T cell therapy has been proven to be very effective even in patients who have failed all other therapies, he said.

This process usually involves inserting into the normal T cells the required genetic information to produce an antibody receptor that will recognize the antigen/substance on the surface of the cancer cell.