Samara State Medical University, under Russia’s Ministry of Health, has received official authorization to produce and use the biomedical cell product “Anti-CD19 CAR-T cells for autologous use.” As the university said, production will be organized at SamSMU and will be the first project of this kind at the regional level in the country.
The product is intended for adult patients with non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphomas who have already undergone two or more lines of systemic therapy without the desired result. This refers to a group of diseases of the blood and lymphatic system in which traditional treatment methods often reach their limits.
CAR-T therapy is based on using the patient’s own immune cells. They are modified so that they can recognize and destroy tumor cells, and then returned to the body. This approach belongs to personalized medicine and is considered one of the most effective methods for treating a number of oncohematological diseases.
Local production could make treatment more accessible and shorten the time needed for patients to receive it. The university expects that introducing the technology will make it possible to roughly double overall patient survival, as well as reduce mortality and the costs associated with imported analogues.
