Doctors at AIIMS, Delhi are in the process of developing a low cost antibody-based adaptive cellular therapy for treatment of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer.
This kind of therapy is expected to make advanced treatments like CAR-T cell therapies more affordable and accessible for patients in India.
The Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a form of adaptive cellular therapy in which a patient's T cells are isolated, genetically modified and infused back in the patients body to recognise and kill the cancer cells, said Dr Mayank Singh, Additional Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at Dr B R Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, (BRAIRCH), AIIMS here.
It is based on targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) which helps to target specific tumour antigens which are found cancer cells specially in cases multiple myeloma.
"So the therapy developed by the AIIMS researchers recognises BCMA as a target on multiple myeloma cells to eliminate them," Si