Cell therapy trial to treat infection in transplant patients
11 September 2008
Cell Medica is a company that works on developing and delivering cellular immunotherapy to treat infectious disease. Having already demonstrated that so-called immunoprophylactic adoptive cell therapy (IMPACT) can be used to prevent infections in bone marrow transplant patients, Cell Medica has set up the CMV~IMPACT study with a Translation Award from the Wellcome Trust to begin to establish the therapy as routine clinical practice around the world.
Usually leukaemia or lymphoma patients, bone marrow transplant patients have profoundly weakened immune systems while they recover. These patients are particularly susceptible to infections such as cytomegalovirus (CMV), which can be a serious complication in their treatment.
Ted Bianco, Director of Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust, said: “We believe that Cell Medica has developed a viable model for the delivery of life-saving cell therapy to patients on a routine basis. In the true spirit of evidence-based medicine, the Wellcome Trust’s funding will not only help the company establish this service, but also to produce authoritative evidence of the therapy’s value through a controlled, randomised trial.”
Gregg Sando, CEO of Cell Medica, commented: “This trial will not only investigate the clinical effectiveness of adoptive cell therapy to treat infectious diseases, but will also allow us to explore the appropriate procedures and logistics required to enable hospitals to use innovative cell therapies based upon an outsourcing provider such as Cell Medica. The fact that we are now treating patients in a confirmatory study shows that this treatment technique is ready for commercialisation. We are pleased to be working with the Wellcome Trust and a number of the leading clinicians and transplant centres in the UK to validate this novel approach to medical treatment.”
The trial will include 110 patients across 11 UK-based hospitals. The Chief Investigator is Dr Karl Peggs of the UCL Cancer Institute. The trial will be conducted as a randomised, intention-to-treat study and is expected to be completed within two years.
Image: Photomicrograph of cytomegalovirus (CMV); Wellcome Images