Mumbai: Ramping up the efforts to fight cancer, a specialised institute for treating blood cancers and related disorders came up at the Fortis Hospital, Mulund. The striking feature of the state-of-the-art facility is the integration of paediatric and geriatric care, advanced transplant procedures, and hematopathology expertise, all under one roof.
Another highlight is the introduction of CAR-T cell therapy, NexCAR19™, said the hospital, underlining that the “revolutionary” line of treatment has been added to its extensive network of bone marrow transplant centres in Mohali, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Bengaluru. The initiative is supported by a commercial collaboration with ImmunoACT, an IIT-Bombay spin-off and pioneer in India’s first fully indigenous and commercially approved gene-modified cell therapy. The method offers a new ray of hope for treating B-cell lymphomas and B-acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in patients aged 15 and above, who have previously found limited success with other treatments, explained a doctor.
Dr Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, MD and CEO, Fortis Healthcare, hailed the life-saving add-on to the institute. Shirish Arya, Co-Founder and Director of Business Development and Corporate Strategy at ImmunoACT termed the institute's launch as a “significant step forward in blood cancer treatment”. With a team of over 20 eminent haematologists, haemato-oncologists and stem cell transplant specialists, the Fortis network has, so far, performed more than 2,500 successful bone marrow transplants.
