Govt promotes indigenous CAR-NK cell therapy platform for oncology and treatment of leishmaniasis

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The Technology Development Board (TBD) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, has awarded the project "CAR-NK Based Cell Therapy Development and Clinical Trials for Defect-to-Treat Tumors and Leishmaniasis" to East Ocean Bio , Gurugram.

Financial assistance has been provided for this. The project aims to establish the first platform-based ecosystem in India for off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell therapy targeting resistant solid tumours and negligible infectious diseases. It aims to strengthen India's capabilities in the field of Advanced Immunotherapy and Biotherapeutics manufacturing.

CAR-NK (Chimeric Antigen Receptor–Natural Killer) cell therapy is emerging as an expandable and potentially safer alternative to traditional autologous (based on the patient's own cells) CAR-T therapy. 

Under the project, the company proposes to develop and commercialise the following:

1. Anti-PD-L1 CAR-NK cell therapy for the treatment of a variety of resistant solid tumors, which are able to escape the body's immune system.
2. CAR-NK therapy targeting leishmaniasis: This represents a new immunotherapeutic strategy for tropical diseases that are extremely important and neglected from the point of view of public health in India.

This technology platform is developed entirely in-house (indigenously), focusing on allogeneic and off-the-shelf CAR-NK and CAR-γδ T cell therapies derived from healthy donors. They are engineered in large quantities, cryopreserved (secured at low temperatures) under GMP-adaptable systems, and can be used directly without any patient matching—which makes its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and rapid deployment possible. The main feature of this innovation is to integrate PD-L1-targeted CAR constructs into NK cells using a gamma-retroviral platform, which ensures high expression efficiency and long-term functionality.