Blog | HemaCare

A new study shows that we may be able to boost the grafting ability in cells for people receiving a bone marrow transplant.

Allogenic stem cell transplantation is a treatment approach in people with diseases that are destructive to the bone marrow, such as multiple myeloma, leukemia, and Hodgkin´s lymphoma. The goal is to restore bone marrow after total-body chemotherapy and irradiation. The transplantation procedure involves transferring hematopoietic stem cells from compatible, healthy donors to a patient. An important complication of this procedure is rejection and destruction of the donated stem cells by the recipient’s immune system before engraftment can occur.

A major breakthrough in Immunotherapy drug coverage was announced last week. Medicare will now cover high-priced blood cancer cell therapies nationwide. The news, announced by officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), comes two years after the FDA approved the first CAR-T therapy in 2017, Novartis’ Kymriah®, a treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. This long sought-after coverage decision will now ensure patients have consistent and predictable access to potentially life-saving therapies.^[1]   

New clinical applications in regenerative medicine are motivating an intense interest in easily accessible sources for producing human stem cells. The 2007 breakthrough showing that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) could be generated directly from adult cells has been a boon to the industry. Since that time, there has been a steady refinement of the cell culture techniques that guide the cell reprogramming process.

Exciting new research published in Nature Communications cites using HemaCare leukapheresis material to design primary human T cells that may be more effective at fighting cancer than CAR-T cells. ^[1]

The successful treatment of B cell leukemias with genetically modified T cells heralded a new frontier in cell-based medicines. CAR-T cells, or chimeric antigen receptor T cells, have become the face of cell and gene therapy, with Novartis’ first-in-class Kymriah® prompting a robust pipeline of competitive CAR-T treatments. Now a research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts is taking T cell-based immunotherapy one step further. By changing the way T cells target cancer cells, they claim to have come up with a more effective cancer immunotherapy mechanism.

Stem cells are the foundation from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated. Stem cells are primarily found in the bone marrow, where they are produced, but can be induced to migrate into the peripheral blood circulation through a process known as mobilization.