Doctors at Rabin Medical Center’s Davidoff Cancer Center in Petach Tikvah have launched Israel’s first fully “homegrown” CAR-T therapy for blood cancer, using patients’ own immune cells to attack multiple myeloma that no longer responds to standard drugs. In the initial cohort, three severely ill patients received the treatment without unexpected complications and were discharged as planned, a major proof-of-concept for the new platform.
The therapy is produced entirely inside the hospital at the Samueli Integrative Cancer Pioneering Institute, an advanced manufacturing hub embedded within Davidoff. Teams there harvest each patient’s T-cells, genetically reprogram them in the lab using retroviral vectors developed with Germany’s Max Delbrück Center, and reinfuse the engineered cells so they can recognize and destroy myeloma cells with high precision. This turns the patient’s own immune system into a bespoke anti-cancer weapon built under one roof, instead of importing ultra-expensive cell products from abroad.
Multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow, strikes roughly 550 Israelis every year. Even with modern drug combinations, many patients eventually exhaust their options as the disease becomes drug-resistant. CAR-T immunotherapy, which re-arms T-cells with synthetic receptors to seek and destroy malignant cells, has already changed the outlook for several blood cancers worldwide and is steadily expanding in Israeli hospitals through tightly regulated clinical programs.
At Rabin, the new treatment is tightly integrated into the Hemato-Oncology Division. The Samueli Institute, led by Avner Paz-Tsuk, operates to international standards for advanced cell therapies, working hand-in-hand with the division headed by Prof. Pia Raanani. The CAR-T program itself is directed by Prof. Michal Besser, while the clinical trial is led by Prof. Moshe Yeshurun together with myeloma specialist Dr. Iuliana Vaxman and Prof. Salomon Stemmer. Hospital physicians say early responses in the first patients are highly encouraging for people who had been running out of options.
This breakthrough also closes a scientific circle. CAR-T technology was first conceived by Israeli immunologist Prof. Zelig Eshhar at the Weizmann Institute, and Israel has since become a global hub for CAR-T research and trials at centers such as Sheba and Hadassah. Now Rabin’s “blue-and-white” program pushes the field further by proving that an Israeli hospital can develop, manufacture, and deliver next-generation cell therapies end-to-end, potentially cutting costs and shortening life-saving timelines for local patients.
Davidoff Center director Prof. Gal Markel says the goal is not just to treat multiple myeloma, but to build a flexible platform that can be adapted for solid tumors such as lung and liver cancer, and eventually certain autoimmune diseases, all produced and delivered inside the same institution. For Israel, that means one more front where local science and medicine are turning cutting-edge ideas into concrete survival chances for seriously ill patients.
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