Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Shahul 6 min Read 20 Sept 2025, 10:30 am Ist Alka Dwivedi and her team reduced the cost of cancer treatment without compromising the efficiency or safety. Summary The scientist and her team have developed a groundbreaking Car-T therapy, making it accessible to millions at a tenth-tenth-tenth time. The cost in March 2024 had nature a striking head: ‘The latest Car-T cancer therapy is now made in India-one tenth the cost’. Just a month later, the president of India Drroupadi Murmu formally launched the therapy and regarded it as the country’s first homemade gene therapy for cancer. The therapy, developed by a team of Indian scientists and was cleared by regulators in the end of 2023, was a watershed moment in Indian biomedical innovation. In the middle of this revolution was a modest, but determined thirty-five-year-old scientist: Alka Dwivedi. Dwivedi and her team achieved what many people impossible to have thought- they redesigned the latest, patented cancer therapy in the West, which could heal advanced blood and lymphic cancer and reduce the price by nearly 90 percent without compromising the efficiency or safety. It was the kind of medical breakthrough that made Dwivedi a household name nowhere else. But losing among the 1.4 billion people of India, she was barely acknowledged outside her circles, and he has some mention in the Hindu and India today. The Indian media was busy with political turmoil and parliamentary elections when the news broke, while social media was enchanted by the Ambani wedding, the appearance of the airport and an impact on the airport. The performance of Dwivedi – one that could save countless lives around the world for decades, if not centuries, was drowned by Clickbait content and election drama. Dwivedi’s journey to this milestone was just as remarkable as this cancer vaccine itself. She was lifted in the narrow jobs of Dusty Mirzapur in rural Uttar Pradesh, and she completed her schooling and early university in Mirzapur. She then strived for biotechnology for her master’s degree at a little well -known university in Nagpur. A short internship at IISC, Bangalore, opened her eyes to the world of serious scientific research during her master. She received some industrial exposure from Japanese life scientific firm Daiichi Sankyo in Gurgaon, followed by a year-long lead at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. There she worked on interaction with plant companion using RNA interference-her first real brush with genetic engineering. After a year on the iconic Pusa campus of IARI, she joined Iit Bombay’s Biosciences and BioSgineering section. This is where she met Dr Rahul Purwar, an immunologist trained at Harvard Medical School and Hannover Medical School. Together, they pay attention to cancer munotherapy – often called ‘cancer vaccine’ because it helps the body generate its own immunity to cancer cells. Their goal: Bring the Western designed Car-T cell therapy to India and make it accessible to Indian patients. They received medical support from Dr Gaurav Narula and Dr Hasmukh Jain, two knowledgeable oncologists in nearby Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital. Take a look at the full image ‘Vaccine Nation: How Immunization Shaped India’ by Ameer Shaul Macmillan India, 504 pages, £ 699. Car-T cell therapy, which is considered a breakthrough in oncology, involves the withdrawal of the T cells of a patient, and it genetically engineer with synthetic receptors (cars) hunting and destroying cancer cells. This ‘living drug’ has achieved an astonishing success since the arrival of blood cancer such as leukemia and lymphoma, especially in children.1 but the costs were prohibiting -up to £ 30-40 million (about $ 500,000) per patient, even though cancer has emerged as one of the worst murderers in the modern world … 1.46 million new cancer cases diagnosed in the country every year … Except for this alarming data, a large number of cases are not reported above the coverage of cancer hospitals and in rural areas. The incidence of cancer has increased as a result of growing environmental pollution, too much use of plastic and chemicals and increasing dependence on processed and packaged foods. The patients affected are desperately looking for a cure. One of the reliable solutions that emerged in the West in the new millennium was Car-T. The concept of Car-T originated in Israel in the late 1980s and was brought to clinical fruit by well-known oncologist Carl June’s team in the US, with the launch of the first human trial in 2011. Car-T cell therapy brought immunotherapy to a very personalized level-a patient’s own T cells are withdrawn and genetically changed to recognize cancer. If re -submitted to the patient, seek and destroy these social cells of malignant cells with greater accuracy. In 2017, the US FDA approved two Car-T therapies Kymriah (Novartis) and Yescarta (Gilead)-which made headlines for their remarkable success in treating certain leukemia and lymphomas, especially in children. The therapy was a new era of ‘living medicine’ tailored to the cancer of each patient. Despite his promise, high costs and complicated logistics have made Car-T therapy inaccessible for most of the world. When Dwivedi arrived at IIT Bombay in 2015, Car-T trials in the US gained momentum. But in India – where nearly 1.5 million new cancer cases have been reported annually – the therapy was out of reach for most. When she saw cancer patients standing up in nearby Tata Memorial Hospital daily, the mission became a personal one for Dwivedi, which brought her to a safe, effective and affordable version of Car-T therapy in India, India, for India. Dwivedi has led the technical process to design the car and produce the viral vector that produces cancer-fighting genes in the T cells of a patient. But resources were rare. A better equipped bio -engineering lab was still under construction at IIT Bombay, and a variety of equipment had to be imported. Every step was a struggle. More notable is that researchers with knowledge and experience are difficult to come. The silver lining was that the project received important support from Tata Trust in the beginning with £ 1.76m and later from the National Biofarma Mission by Birac, which approved £ 191.5m to finance the clinical phase I/II’s clinical trials. A breakthrough came in 2017 after Dwivedi spent time at the US National Cancer Institute, where she picked up critical knowledge in Car-T cell manufacturing and viral vector development. When she returned to Mumbai, she crashed important challenges in the production of car and vector and began the generation of T cells in the laboratory. Animal trials showed promising remission figures. The project soon received a regulatory green light for clinical trials on cancer patients. By 2021, the team has a GMP degree facility at IIT Bombay building one that meets the standards for sterility and safety. Clinical trials began shortly thereafter and entered informed patients from Tata Memorial with advanced leukemia and lymphoma. June 4, 2021 was a historic milestone in India’s cancer care journey. In the bone marrow transplant unit of the Tata Memorial Center (TMC) in Mumbai, the country’s first Car-T cell therapy was successfully administered to patients by Narula and Team. The results were surprising. Nearly three of the four patients responded to the therapy, and almost half of them went to full remission. Even more encouraging was the reduced toxicity. By adjusting the therapy design, the team managed to reduce dangerous side effects, which made the treatment more safer and more tolerant. Just as important was how they did it. Every component of viral vectors to cell processing systems is made in India. No expensive imports. No reliance on foreign patents. The result: a world-class CAR-T therapy on a tenth of the cost of its Western peers. In October 2023, the therapy brand received NEXCAR19 approval from the approval of India’s central medicine standard control organization, which became the country’s first sanctioned car T-cell product. By mid -2024, more than 150 patients received Nexcar19. The team expects the number to cross by 2025 500. The construction is underway on a larger manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Mumbai, with the aim of producing 1,200 treatments annually. The new website will house laboratories for high efficiency for vector and car T-cell production, along with extensive quality control units to accelerate the turnaround time. The team dreams of lowering the cost of therapy to as little as £ 10,000 in one day. Excerpt from Vaccine Nation: How immunization India formed with permission from Macmillan India. Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Features Read Next Story
‘Vaccine Nation’: HOW ALKA DWIVEDI A Revolution in Cancer Treatment in India
