Cheaper cancer care therapy earns big bucks for pharma company
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India's cell and gene therapy pioneer ImmunoAct has turned profitable in its first full year of operations, a rare feat in the country's emerging startup landscape where research-based pharma enterprises encounter serious scale and cash flow challenges.ImmunoACT, in which Hyderabad-based drugmaker Laurus Labs has roughly 34% equity stake, saw revenues of ₹62 crore with a profit before tax of ₹12 crore in FY25, according to sources. The year before, ImmunoAct had revenues of ₹11 crore.Founded by immunologist Rahul Purwar in 2013, ImmunoACT was spun off from the department of bioengineering department of IIT Bombay in 2018.ImmunoACT's NexCAR19 is the first indigenously developed breakthrough cancer CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell) therapy approved by India's central drug regulatory agency in October 2023.NexCAR19 was formally launched in India in April 2024 at a price ~90% cheaper than its US and European counterparts like Novartis and Gilead, making it far more affordable for India and low-and-middle income countries, on its potential approval. So far, the therapy has been infused in over 350 patients across 70 hospitals in India.In CAR-T treatment, the patient's immune cells are extracted and through a maze of re-engineering processes infused back to recognize and kill cancer cells, giving a longer remission to patients as compared to the conventional options like immunotherapy or bone marrow transplants. The therapy is used when all other options are exhausted.Each CAR-T dose (one-and-done infusion) costs around ₹30 lakh, which was initially priced at ₹42 lakh, and is expected to see a further decline as demand picks up.Meanwhile, ImmunoACT has recently appointed former managing director of Roche India V Simpson Immanuel as its strategic advisor.Rahul Purwar added, "We needed someone who understands not just the commercial landscape, but also the nuances of innovation, patient access, and global expansion."Earlier this year, Immuneel Therapeutics, backed by leading names like Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and globally renowned oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee secured approval for Qartemi, its cell therapy for adult B-cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, in India. Companies like Cipla , Dr Reddy's Labs and Bharat Biotech are investing heavily in new CAR-Ts.Globally, CAR-Ts are at the frontiers of a range of cancer treatments, attracting billions of dollars in investments from large drugmakers. The market for such therapies is expected to touch $134 billion by 2034 from around $10 billion at present.
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