Inside Cellogen, The Biotech Startup Trying To Make $500K Cancer Care Affordable

When Dr Gaurav Kharya returned to India in 2014 after training at Newcastle and Imperial College London, he carried a quiet frustration. As a pediatric blood cancer specialist, he had spent years watching hospitals abroad offer cutting-edge cell and gene therapies as outright cures, while in India, patients made do with painkillers and basic chemotherapy. 

Over half a decade later, a meeting with Dr Tanveer Ahmad, a researcher in cancer cell engineering, led to the establishment of Cellogen Therapeutics, a cellular engineering and gene therapy startup.

It develops next‑generation therapies utilising Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cells to treat cancers and blood disorders with an aim to make life-saving therapies more affordable and accessible.  

Personalising Cancer Treatment

Cellogen is taking aim at one of oncology’s most stubborn problems, which is relapse in blood cancers, with third-generation bispecific CAR-T cell therapy. CAR-T therapy is a personalised cancer treatment, where a patient’s own immune cells are taken out, re-engineered in a lab to recognise cancer, and put back into the body, where they hunt and kill cancer cells 

“Unlike earlier methods of CAR-T therapies, which look for a single marker to attack cancer cells, Cellogen Therapeutics’s platform targets two different markers called CD19 and CD20 antigens,” Kharya told Inc42. 

An antigen is any foreign molecule or particle (like a protein) that triggers your immune system to act.  

Prevalent second-generation CAR-T treatments for B-cell malignancies target the CD19 antigen alone, and while they work initially, they falter over time. Roughly 50–60% of patients relapse within five years, either because the engineered T cells fail to persist in the body, or because cancer cells learn to mask CD19 altogether. This phenomenon, known as antigen escape, drives 20–30% of relapses. 

Cellogen’s lead product, XenCAR-T, targets both CD19 and CD20, so when cancer cells switch off one marker, the second remains in the crosshairs of the antigen. 

Underpinning the product is Cellogen’s patented lentiviral vector platform, which is an advanced gene delivery vehicle that helps in producing engineered cells that survive longer in the body and keep hunting cancer for years instead of months. 

The startup says its third-generation design also tackles the other big failure mode of existing CAR-T therapies which is the lack of persistence, by extending how long the engineered cells survive after infusion.

If the science holds up in trials, Cellogen could put India on a next-generation cell therapy map that has so far been dominated by US and European biotech players, in a category where a single course of treatment can cost upwards of $400,000 globally. 

“A single course of CAR-T therapy globally costs $400,000 to $600,000 in product alone, even before infusion and hospitalisation. Indian player ImmunoACT, the IIT Bombay spinout that became the first to launch a domestically-developed CAR-T, brought that down to roughly ₹30–35 Lakh. Cellogen is targeting ₹25 Lakh (~$26,000),” said Kharya.

The cost reduction comes from indigenising every layer of the stack. The most expensive imported input — lentiviral vector — is manufactured in-house at one of Cellogen’s three specialised facilities xin Noida, at roughly 1/20th the cost of imports. And 60–70% of the quality-control kits that every batch must clear is typically imported at a steep cost; these too have been developed in-house. 

AI Improves Efficiency

The CAR molecules that train immune cells to find cancer have traditionally been built using antibody discovery platforms, technologies like hybridoma and phage display, which are 40 to 50 years old. Developing a single new antibody this way takes around two years.

Cellogen claims it has compressed that timeline dramatically. Drawing on roughly a million antibody sequences and structures from across species, it built CelAbGen, an AI tool that generates entirely new antibodies in 24 hours. 

“A second tool, CARMSeD, then screens which of those antibody binders will actually work as a CAR molecule, testing factors like structural complexity and how reliably it binds to the cancer target,” explained cofounder Ahmad 

CARMSeD has already screened 10,842 CAR constructs and molecules selected from that library are now heading into clinical trials.

Together, the two proprietary tools have shrunk what was a two-year-per-molecule R&D cycle into a process where unique antibodies can be designed in 24 hours. 

Cellogen now claims to have the world’s largest library of AI-generated CAR constructs, nearly 13,000, and is rolling out a third tool, CAR-T AI Agent, as a global knowledge platform for doctors, patients and researchers.

A Second Stream That is Gaining Wings

Cellogen raised approximately ₹18 Cr in January 2024 from Natco Pharma, which acquired a 5% stake in the startup. In its latest round in May, the startup secured ₹20 Cr (about $2 Mn) in funding from Kotak Alternate Asset Managers (Kotak Alts). Kotak Alts made the investment through the Kotak Life Sciences Fund I (KLSF-I), an investment vehicle for early- and growth-stage lifescience and healthtech ventures. In this round, Natco Pharma too made a small investment of ₹2.5 Cr, reinstating their conviction in Cellogen, said Kharya. 

The company has also pulled in over ₹15 Cr in non-dilutive funding and grants from BIRAC and other government schemes. Each clinical trial costs roughly ₹14–15 Cr per product. XenCAR-T’s first-in-human study will be conducted at CMC Vellore. 

Regulatory clearance is expected in the next two to three weeks. Cellogen is targeting commercialisation in 18–24 months for XenCAR-T

Cellogen’s extended research cycle has led it to stumble on to a second business. 

With the imported lentiviral vector being a big bottleneck for India’s nascent cell and gene therapy ecosystem, the company has begun supplying its own GMP-grade vector to research institutions, including IIT Kanpur, CMC Vellore, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata.

A production run of two to three batches a month already generates ₹30–40 Lakh in revenue, Cellogen’s cofounder claimed. 

The startup plans to scale this aggressively both to fund their own pipeline, and because they see themselves as the picks-and-shovels supplier for everyone else trying to build in the space.

Add in the indigenous QC kits being licensed out, and the AI tools being readied as a SaaS-style platform, and Cellogen has built three potential revenue streams before its first therapy has reached a patient.

The Biotech Competitive Landscape

Globally, the CAR-T market is dominated by a handful of Big Pharma players like Novartis, Gilead, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson. Their therapies remain largely out of reach for patients outside the US and Europe, largely due to high cost involved.

In India, the cancer biotech space is small but moving fast. ImmunoACT, the IIT Bombay spinout backed by Laurus Labs, launched an indigenous CAR-T (NexCAR19) in 2023 at roughly a tenth of the global price. Immuneel Therapeutics, co-founded by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, is close behind with its own CD19 candidate. On the gene therapy side, Bharat Biotech and a clutch of academic-industry consortia are exploring sickle cell and thalassemia programmes.

Cellogen’s 32-odd-person team now has the runway, the regulatory green light, and the clinical site. The next 24 months will decide whether it can deliver a next-generation, dual-targeting CAR-T therapy at a price India and the developing world can afford.

[Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam]

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