In Russia, clinical research has been completed for a new drug against blood cancer, Utzhefra. Specialists are now preparing the documents for state registration. If everything goes well, the drug could enter clinical practice as early as 2026.
Utzhefra is an anti-CD19 CAR-T cell therapy. The method is based on using the patient’s own immune cells: T lymphocytes are collected, modified in the laboratory so that they can recognize tumor cells, and then returned to the body. Their target is the CD19 protein, which is characteristic of a number of malignant blood cells.
CAR-T therapy is considered worldwide to be one of the most promising directions in hematology because it uses a person’s own immune system—only trained to act more precisely. This is the first clinical study of anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy in Russia. For Russian hematology, this is an important step: it concerns personalized treatment in which the medicine is essentially created with the participation of a specific patient’s cells.
