Shanghai, October 2026 — As innovative drugs and advanced therapies move more quickly from Chinese labs into the clinic, more overseas patients are coming to China not as an afterthought on a tourist trip, but specifically for treatment. To meet that shift, Shanghai’s Jiahui International Hospital has formally opened an International Cell Therapy Center.

Jiahui is Shanghai’s first licensed international hospital and one of the city’s first high-level privately run hospitals included in the medical insurance pilot. At the unveiling, Dr. John K. Hsiang, Chairman of the Jiahui Health Executive Committee, said China has become both a hotbed for innovative-therapy research and trials and an important contributor to global medical innovation. In June 2026, the world’s first CAR-T therapy for solid tumors was approved for marketing in Shanghai, which he described as a move from “technology follower” to “global contributor” in cell therapy.

From “sightseeing with a checkup” to “coming for treatment”

Cell therapy uses living cells as the treatment itself, to replace or repair damaged cells, clear abnormal cells or adjust the state of diseased tissue. In recent years it has advanced rapidly in cancer, autoimmune disease and hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation.

“With China’s large patient population and research capacity, the country has become a global innovation center for cell therapy,” said Dr. Eric J. Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He noted that a decade ago NEJM published only one research article from Chinese scholars, while this year it has already published more than twenty.

Dr. Wu Haishan, President of Jiahui International Hospital, said that over the past nine years the hospital has provided nearly 500,000 patient visits a year to people from 180 countries and regions. “More and more international patients are coming to China for advanced treatment options,” he said. “That is a major reason we established the International Cell Therapy Center.”

A summit and a center, shared with the world

The opening took place alongside the first Jiahui International Cell Therapy Summit, hosted by the hospital and co-organized by the Jiahui Medical Research and Education Group (J-Med). The event was livestreamed globally, with doctors, medical students, international medical professionals, patients and their families from 14 countries and regions registering to watch online.

Academic talks covered diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, cell therapy for solid tumors, universal and in vivo CAR-T research, cord-blood transplantation in malignant blood diseases, and real-world CAR-T care including long-term infection management. Speakers included experts from Ruijin Hospital, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital and Jiahui’s own hematology and oncology teams.

Early experience with overseas CAR-T patients

Jiahui’s oncology center already has a track record with foreign patients on CAR-T. In September 2023, the first foreign patient in China to complete treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel was discharged from the center. Since then the hospital has treated patients from Singapore, Russia, Hungary, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, the Maldives and other places, as well as from Hong Kong.

After the solid-tumor CAR-T therapy was approved in China in June 2026, Jiahui was among the first institutions to put it into clinical use and completed treatment for the first foreign patient worldwide to receive that therapy. In May 2026 the oncology center also ran an online training course on CAR-T innovation and full-cycle clinical management for more than 360 doctors in Saudi Arabia.

According to the hospital, the new center will offer autologous stem-cell transplantation and all CAR-T products already approved by China’s drug regulator, covering indications that include acute lymphoblastic leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and solid tumors such as gastric cancer and gastroesophageal junction cancer.

Building a full path for patients who travel for care

Looking ahead, the center says it will work only with cell-therapy regimens already approved for marketing in China, match them to each patient’s condition and indications, and use Jiahui’s multidisciplinary platform to refine the whole pathway: assessment, cell collection, infusion, monitoring and management of adverse reactions, and follow-up visits after treatment.

The hospital also points to language support, cross-cultural communication and international-patient management as strengths it intends to put at the service of people who come from abroad. In Dr. Hsiang’s words, inbound medical care is moving from “sightseeing first, medical care second” to “coming for treatment, with travel as an added experience,” and hospitals need to raise their ability to deliver cross-border care so that more patients can reach China’s innovative therapies safely and conveniently.

Editor: Chen Qing

If you need any help with medical care in Shanghai/China, be free to let us know at Chenqing@ShanghaiDoctor.cn.

Translated and adapted from reports by Shanghai Observer (上观新闻) / Wen Hui Bao, via sina.com.cn, “创新疗法吸引越来越多海外患者来华就医，上海国际医院开设“细胞治疗中心””; with additional reporting from PR Newswire Asia / Jiahui Health, “首届嘉会国际细胞治疗高峰论坛成功举办，嘉会国际细胞治疗中心正式揭牌”.