Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost

Good news! Competition is good, more of it is better! Pardon, this is a bit of older news!

"A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood cancers and have burgeoned in the past few years. The Indian CAR-T therapy costs one-tenth that of comparable commercial products available globally.
A single treatment of NexCAR19, manufactured by Mumbai-based ImmunoACT, costs between US$30,000 and $40,000. The first CAR-T therapy was approved in the United States in 2017, and commercial CAR-T therapies currently cost between $370,000 and $530,000, not including hospital fees and drugs to treat side effects. These treatments have also shown promise in treating autoimmune diseases and brain cancer.

India’s drug regulator approved NexCAR19 for therapeutic use in India in October. By December, ImmunoACT was administering the therapy to paying patients, and it is now treating some two-dozen people a month in hospitals across the country. ..."

Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost The treatment, called NexCAR19, raises hopes that this transformative class of medicine will become more readily available in low- and middle-income countries.