Addressing Production and Logistic Challenges in Cell Therapy

Although cell therapy strategies have demonstrated efficacy in treating relapsed or refractory lymphomas, the production and logistics associated with these therapies still require much improvement. Gamida Cell, a company concentrating on improving the production of cell therapy, recently deployed a new process to refine the stability of their investigational agent, GDA-201, in its treatment of follicular and diffuse large B lymphomas.

Julian Adams, PhD, chief executive officer, Gamida Cell, recently sat down with GeneTherapyLive to provide some further insight into the research efforts surrounding GDA-201. He explained how the company has developed a cyro buffer which allows them to efficiently freeze and recover GDA-201 cells. He also shared how the company’s efforts in researching omidubicel (Nicord) will affect the treatment of hematological malignancies.

Patients with high-risk hematologic malignancies treated with omidubicel reported a meaningful improvement in median time to neutrophil engraftment compared with standard umbilical cord blood transplantation, according to the results from a phase 2 trial (NCT02730299) recently presented at the virtual 47th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

REFERENCE

Sanz GF, Stiff PJ, Cutler CS, et al. Results of a phase III randomized, multicenter study comparing omidubicel with standard umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT) in patients with high-risk hematologic malignancies following myeloablation. Presented at: 47th Annual Meeting of the EBMT; March 14-17, 2021; Virtual. Abstract GS2-7.

This video was originally published on GeneTherapyLive as “Tackling Storage and Logistical Challenges in Cell Therapy”