{"entity":{"id":"purwar-rahul","kind":"person","name":"Rahul Purwar","aka":[],"tldr":"The IIT Bombay immunologist whose laboratory designed India's first approved CAR-T therapy and who founded the company that makes it for a fraction of Western prices.","summary":"Rahul Purwar leads an immunology and cell engineering laboratory at IIT Bombay, where work on a humanised CD19 CAR construct began in 2013. He founded ImmunoACT in 2018 as an IIT Bombay spin-off to take the therapy through trials with Tata Memorial Centre, first dosing patients in 2021 and securing DCGI approval for NexCAR19 (talicabtagene autoleucel) in 2023. ImmunoACT reports more than 600 patients treated at over 130 authorised centres, a manufacturing success rate of 98% and a facility capacity of 750 patients a year, expanding to 1,500.","asOf":"2026-09-10","links":[{"label":"ImmunoACT","url":"https://immunoact.com"},{"label":"IIT Bombay","url":"https://www.iitb.ac.in"},{"label":"PubMed author search","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Purwar%20R%5BAuthor%5D%20CAR%20T%20India"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["car-t","point-of-care-cell-manufacturing"],"targets":["cd19"],"drugs":["talicabtagene-autoleucel"],"companies":["immunoact"],"institutions":["iit-bombay"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-manufacturing-cell-therapy","b-global-access"],"keyPapers":["paper-jain-talicabtagene-lancet-haem-2025"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Professor, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay; founder, ImmunoACT","institutionId":"iit-bombay","specialisms":["CAR-T cell engineering","Immunology","Cell therapy manufacturing","Translational research"],"profiles":[{"label":"ImmunoACT","url":"https://immunoact.com"},{"label":"IIT Bombay","url":"https://www.iitb.ac.in"},{"label":"PubMed author search","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Purwar%20R%5BAuthor%5D%20CAR%20T%20India"}],"papers":[{"title":"Talicabtagene autoleucel for relapsed or refractory B-cell malignancies: results from an open-label, multicentre, phase 1/2 study","journal":"Lancet Haematology","year":2025,"doi":"10.1016/S2352-3026(24)00377-6"}]},"route":"/people/purwar-rahul/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"car-t","kind":"technology","name":"CAR-T cell therapy","route":"/technologies/car-t/"},{"id":"point-of-care-cell-manufacturing","kind":"technology","name":"Point-of-care and decentralised cell manufacturing","route":"/technologies/point-of-care-cell-manufacturing/"}],"target":[{"id":"cd19","kind":"target","name":"CD19","route":"/targets/cd19/"}],"drug":[{"id":"talicabtagene-autoleucel","kind":"drug","name":"Talicabtagene autoleucel","route":"/drugs/talicabtagene-autoleucel/"}],"company":[{"id":"immunoact","kind":"company","name":"ImmunoACT","route":"/companies/immunoact/"}],"institution":[{"id":"iit-bombay","kind":"institution","name":"Indian Institute of Technology Bombay","route":"/institutions/iit-bombay/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-manufacturing-cell-therapy","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines","route":"/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/"},{"id":"b-global-access","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Most of the world has almost no cancer care","route":"/bottlenecks/b-global-access/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-jain-talicabtagene-lancet-haem-2025","kind":"paper","name":"Talicabtagene autoleucel for relapsed or refractory B-cell malignancies: an open-label, multicentre, phase 1/2 study","route":"/key-papers/paper-jain-talicabtagene-lancet-haem-2025/"}],"trial":[{"id":"talicel-phase-1-2","kind":"trial","name":"Talicabtagene autoleucel (NexCAR19) phase 1/2","route":"/trials/talicel-phase-1-2/"}]}}