Medical issues and perspectives

A 15-year-old girl named Trupti, suffering from blood cancer, received a new lease on life thanks to CAR-T cell therapy, successfully performed by a team at a prestigious hospital in Bhubaneswar. This marks the first successful CAR-T cell therapy for cancer treatment in Odisha and the fifth in India.

This groundbreaking therapy involves modifying a patient’s T-cells to target cancer cells more effectively. Trupti, who battled acute leukemia, became the first patient in eastern India to undergo this treatment. After undergoing chemotherapy, she received CAR-T cell therapy two days later. “My condition is normal now. There was a little fever, but I’m doing well. I’m grateful to all the doctors,” Trupti shared, filled with joy.

Dr. Priyanka Samal, Head of Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant at IMS and SUM Hospital, highlighted that while CAR-T cell therapy is well-established in the West, it is still emerging in India. She reported that Trupti is thriving just a month after the procedure. The hospital's ability to provide this revolutionary treatment means patients no longer need to travel abroad and incur exorbitant costs.

Instead of spending crores, the therapy is available for approximately ₹30-35 lakh, a more affordable option in India. Trupti’s parents expressed their gratitude for their daughter's recovery, stating, “Every day is a blessing. We are just grateful to have our daughter back.” Trupti now dreams of becoming a doctor herself.

A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes has become insulin-independent after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells derived from her own body. The groundbreaking procedure, conducted by Deng Hongkui and his team at Peking University, is the first of its kind for treating type 1 diabetes. The researchers extracted cells from three patients, reverted them to a pluripotent state, and used chemically induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to generate insulin-producing islets. These islets were transplanted into the woman’s abdominal muscles—a novel site for such transplants, which allows for easy monitoring via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Two-and-a-half months after the transplant, the woman began producing sufficient insulin, eliminating the need for external insulin injections. She has maintained stable blood glucose levels for more than a year, with over 98% of her day spent within the target range. The researchers are expanding the study to include 10–20 additional participants, as the preliminary results are highly promising for the other two individuals in the trial. However, more research is needed to confirm the long-term efficacy of the procedure, especially in preventing immune system rejection without immunosuppressants.

This approach, using a patient’s own cells, offers hope for avoiding immune rejection, a common challenge with islet transplants from donors. However, scaling this personalized therapy remains a challenge. Other research groups are pursuing donor-derived stem cell treatments. Vertex Pharmaceuticals has reported success in using donor-derived embryonic stem cells to create insulin-producing islets in type 1 diabetes patients, with some participants achieving insulin independence. Future developments focus on making these treatments more accessible and minimizing the need for immune-suppressing drugs, thereby offering a potential cure for millions living with diabetes.