“If CAR-T cells can be produced domestically, treatment costs could be reduced to under VND500 million (US$19,000),” Dr. Phu Chi Dung, director of the hospital, said at a press conference Tuesday.

The event marked the opening of three concurrent international and national conferences on transfusion, transplantation and cell therapy that will take place from Tuesday to Saturday.

More than 2,000 delegates, including nearly 350 from abroad, are attending.

A CAR T-cell is a T lymphocyte immune cell that has been genetically engineered to express a synthetic receptor known as a chimeric antigen receptor, which enables the T-cells to bind to specific proteins, called antigens, present on the surface of cancer cells and eliminate the cells, according to the National Cancer Institute.

CAR T-cell therapy utilizes these engineered T-cells to treat certain types of cancers.

The process begins with collecting T-cells from a patient’s blood. They are then modified in a laboratory to produce CARs, which are designed to recognize specific antigens on cancer cells.

A large number of CAR T-cells are created and infused back into the patient for them to seek out and destroy the cancer cells.

The first Vietnamese patient to get CAR-T cell therapy was a 12-year-old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-cell), a severe form of blood cancer.

After going to Taiwan for CAR-T cell infusion with the hospital’s assistance, she has returned and is undergoing monthly maintenance therapy in Vietnam and has been stable for over a year.

At first she underwent chemotherapy but the cancer quickly recurred. She then had a haploidentical stem cell transplant from her father, but the disease again recurred quickly.

Dr Dung said CAR-T cell therapy is among the most complex techniques in hematology but is considered one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine.

It targets and destroys cancer cells, reduces the risk of relapse, prolongs survival, and improves quality of life, as numerous international studies have showed, he said.

But the cost is extremely high at tens of billions of dong, he said.

The treatment in Taiwan was cheaper compared to other countries, but still ran into billions, he said.

To mitigate this problem, the hospital has been upgrading facilities, sending doctors, nurses and technicians for training in Taiwan, and partnering with international experts to move toward local production.

It is also carrying out a research project and aims to develop it into a national study.

If it is successful, the treatment cost would be significantly lower and give more blood cancer patients access to advanced therapy without having to leave the country.

HCMC’s Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital is a top-tier specialty facility and the leading referral center for southern Vietnam.

It is also one of the country’s foremost institutions in transfusion medicine and hematology. It has pioneered many complex techniques and is now the largest bone marrow transplant center in Vietnam, offering nearly all of the world’s advanced treatments, including stem cell transplantation, the latest chemotherapy protocols, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy.