Bhubaneswar: The Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, the medical school of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University, here has become the leading hospital in the state to offer chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) therapy to treat blood cancer patients.
Talking to media persons here Thursday, Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant department head Priyanka Samal said, “The therapy represents the future of cancer treatment, providing new hope to patients with B-cell hematological malignancies who may not have other viable treatment options.” “Unlike traditional chemotherapy, CAR T-cell therapy genetically modifies the patient’s Tcells— critical cells in the immune system—to recognise and target cancer cells and destroy them,” she said. She told that the groundbreaking therapy was used for the first time in Odisha on a 15- year-old girl from Mayurbhanj district, who responded positively to the treatment and is doing well. “The therapy holds promise for those patients in India who do not respond to conventional treatment and bone marrow transplant (BMT),” Samal said.
She further said that SOA founder Manojranjan Nayak has extended his full support for implementation of the innovative treatment option for the patients. Medical Superintendent of the hospital Pusparaj Samantasinhar said the treatment will be taken up using the new therapy in the entire eastern India post-marketing of the product. Department of Transfusion Medicine head Girija Nandini Kanungo and, Associate Professor and in-charge of the Hematology ICU Santosh Kumar Singh were present on the occasion. Notably, the therapy has been pioneered indigenously by IIT-Bombay in collaboration with the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, and the product, known as NexCAR19, has been developed by ImmunoACT in India making it affordable for patients.