# Polina Stepensky

Source: https://onco.cc/people/polina-stepensky/  
OnCo record `polina-stepensky` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Runs a hospital department that makes its own CAR-T cells and gives them fresh, without freezing, at a fraction of what a commercial product costs.

## Summary

Polina Stepensky directs bone marrow transplantation and cancer immunotherapy at Hadassah Medical Center, which manufactures its own chimeric antigen receptor T cells on site. Its anti-BCMA product HBI0101, later licensed as NXC-201, was given fresh without cryopreservation in a phase 1 dose-escalation study (NCT04720313). The first 20 heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, reported in Haematologica in 2023, had an overall response rate of 75 percent with stringent or complete response in half, cytokine release syndrome only at grade 1 or 2 in 90 percent, and no neurotoxicity of any grade. The programme has since grown: a 2025 report in Cancers analyses coagulopathy in 108 patients treated on the same single-centre trial. The point of the work is not only the product but the model, that a hospital can make cell therapy for its own region rather than shipping cells across continents.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-25
- Tags: clinician-scientist; cell-therapy
- Role: Director, Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunotherapy, Hadassah Medical Center
- Specialisms: Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation; Academic CAR-T manufacture; Multiple myeloma; Paediatric immunology

## Sources

- Hadassah Medical Center: https://www.hadassah.org.il/en/
- PubMed author search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Stepensky%20P%5BAuthor%5D%20CAR

## Connected records

- cancers: [Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/dlbcl/), [Multiple myeloma](https://onco.cc/cancers/multiple-myeloma/)
- fronts: [Cell Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/cell-therapy/)
- technologies: [Allogeneic (off-the-shelf) cell therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/allogeneic-cell-therapy/), [CAR-T cell therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/car-t/)
- targets: [BCMA](https://onco.cc/targets/bcma/), [CD19](https://onco.cc/targets/cd19/)
- institutions: [Hadassah Medical Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/hadassah/), [Hebrew University of Jerusalem](https://onco.cc/institutions/hebrew-university-of-jerusalem/)
- trials: [HBI0101 (NXC-201) multiple myeloma phase 1](https://onco.cc/trials/nxc-201-mm/)
- bottlenecks: [Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-manufacturing-cell-therapy/)

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