Cellogen Therapeutics is developing CAR-T cell therapies for blood cancers in India
The Delhi company designs and manufactures its own cell and gene therapies and is preparing a first clinical trial with Christian Medical College, Vellore.
CAR-T therapy, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy, a form of engineered immune treatment, works by taking a patient's own immune cells and re-engineering them to recognise and attack cancer cells. Doctors then return the modified cells to the patient's body.
In some blood cancers, this has produced lasting remission in patients who had run out of other options. Courses in the United States and Europe have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. was set up in New Delhi in 2021 to develop and manufacture these therapies inside India.
It was founded by Dr Gaurav Kharya, a paediatric haematologist and stem cell transplant specialist, along with co-founder Dr Tanveer Ahmad. The company works on cancers of the blood as well as inherited blood disorders.
In India, blood cancers are common, and beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease affect large numbers of patients for whom a stem cell transplant is the only curative option, and often an inaccessible one. Kharya has spent his clinical career improving transplant outcomes, including for patients with no matched donor.
Two targets instead of one
Cellogen's key product is a bispecific CAR-T therapy, designed to recognise two cancer markers rather than the single marker most approved therapies target. The company says this could reduce relapse. It reasons that a cancer which loses one marker may still be caught by the other. That is the company's own position, and it has not been tested yet.
The company has said it designed third and fourth generation CAR constructs in-house, and it has received a patent covering its CAR-T platform. Alongside the blood cancer work, it has early-stage gene therapy programmes for beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, and lists solid tumours and inherited metabolic disorders among the conditions it is working towards.
Cellogen manufactures in-house. It runs a facility in Noida built to good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, and designs its CAR constructs and produces its lentiviral vectors on site. Cell therapy companies often buy these vectors from outside suppliers, which adds cost and waiting time. Cellogen says this in-house approach is central to keeping the therapy's price down.
Results so far are laboratory-stage. The company says early in vitro results have been promising and that clinical trials are to follow. The study has not been peer reviewed or evaluated by a regulator.
Towards a first trial
Natco Pharma invested about $2 million in Cellogen, taking a 5.38% stake in the company. In May 2026, Cellogen announced a further Rs20 crore, about $2.3 million, from Kotak Alternate Asset Managers through Kotak Life Sciences Fund I, which backs early and growth-stage healthcare ventures.
The company has said the money will go towards advancing its CAR-T clinical programmes, expanding the gene therapy pipeline, and strengthening manufacturing and regulatory capability. A Phase I trial is planned with Christian Medical College, Vellore, which will assess safety and efficacy. Ahmad has said the investment lets the company move towards next-generation approaches, including in vivo CAR-T.
Cellogen has said it is working towards CAR-T courses in the range of $60,000 to $70,000, compared with global pricing the company estimates at $500,000 to $700,000. India approved its first home-grown CAR-T therapy, ImmunoACT's NexCAR19, at a price well below international levels, which showed that India's drug regulator is willing to approve this category of therapy. Whether Cellogen can deliver on that price gap depends on results still to come; its own therapy has not yet reached a clinical trial.
(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)