It is 2015. Alka Dwivedi, is striving to develop patient-focused therapy for cancer. This leads her to join Rahul Purwar, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), who is working on developing affordable CAR-T cell therapy in India.
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy involves genetically modifying a patient’s T cells to fight malignant tumor cells. T cells are a type of white blood cell developed from the stem cells in the bone marrow and are a vital part of the immune system, defending the body against infections.
Dr. Purwar returned to India in 2013 after completing his post-doctoral programme at Harvard Medical School and realised that India lagged behind the West in CAR-T research. The US was already working on it by then, and in 2017, it had approved the first commercial CAR-T cell therapy, which cost anywhere between ₹3 and 4 crores, excluding hospitalisation to treat side effects, rendering it unaffordable to middle and low-income countries, including India.
