NexCAR19: India Launches Its First Indigenous CAR T-Cell Therapy

A hush fell over the Emerging Science, Technology & Innovation Conclave (ESTIC) 2025 in New Delhi as India unveiled a bold new chapter in cancer care: NexCAR19, the nation’s first indigenous CAR-T cell therapy. Developed by a team of scientists from IIT Bombay and the Tata Memorial Centre, this groundbreaking therapy reprograms a patient’s own immune cells into targeted cancer hunters, a “living drug” designed to make advanced gene therapies more affordable and accessible. The story of NexCAR19 traces back to IIT Bombay’s innovation ecosystem, where the project received mentorship, funding, and incubation support under BIRAC’s BioNest initiative.

Parallel clinical efforts at the Tata Memorial Centre led to the first CAR-T clinical trials at ACTREC in 2021, supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the National Biopharma Mission. Those early trials, focused on pediatric…