Russia’s first CAR-T drug for blood cancer, Utzhefra (gemagenlecleucel), has successfully completed clinical trials and could be registered as early as this year, said Elena Parovichnikova, director general of the National Medical Research Centre for Haematology and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The drug will be free for patients under the state guarantees programme, she said. The centre is already preparing the registration dossier for the drug.
Parovichnikova also noted that the Health Ministry has developed a “new vector of opportunities” for the use of CAR-T cell products. Russian expert centres can prepare individualised therapy for each patient, as the technology underlying the drug is already known.
Utzhefra was developed to treat severe haematological malignancies, particularly patients with resistant forms and relapses of B‑cell blood cancers, Parovichnikova said. Clinical trials of the Russian drug began in 2024. Only one similar CAR-T drug, Novartis’s Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), is currently registered in Russia. According to the latest analyst data, its price in the first quarter of 2026 was 28.3 million roubles per pack.
CAR-T therapy is a form of cell-based treatment: a patient’s immune cells are modified by attaching an artificial receptor designed to destroy specific tumour cells. The method helps patients for whom chemoradiotherapy has proved ineffective.
