White Blood Cell Collection for T cell therapies

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    White Blood Cell Collection for T cell therapies

  • IRAS ID

    259763

  • Contact name

    Waseem Qasim

  • Contact email

    waseem.qasim@gosh.nhs.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    2 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    This proposal outlines the use of healthy volunteer donors for the production of T cell banks to treat certain cancers or virus infections. Healthy donors will be recruited from donor registries run by Anthony Nolan. Anthony Nolan is a pioneering charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancer. They use their register to match remarkable individuals willing to donate their blood to people who desperately need lifesaving treatment.

    Prior to initiating a clinical trial, T-cell production methods must be developed and validated. Cells must then be banked in a compliant manner. A sufficient source of T-cells is hence needed to develop and validate these T-cell production processes and undertake the banking steps. This protocol will help source normal healthy donor T-cells from healthy volunteers by leukapheresis (collection using a special blood handling device) of healthy volunteers. After successful cell processing runs in a clean room facility (GMP lab), T cells collected from healthy donors will be used to create banks of donor T cells. In some cases cells may be genome edited and modified with a lentiviral vector for cancer therapy. These could potentially be used to treat multiple patients in subsequent Phase 1 trials (subject to MHRA and ethics approvals). The harvest may also be used to simulate production processes for other research/ GMP production under development at Great Ormond Street Hospital under the supervision of Prof Waseem Qasim.

  • REC name

    London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    19/LO/0447

  • Date of REC Opinion

    3 Jun 2019

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion