White blood cell collection for development ofAdoptive Immunotherapies

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Using white blood cells isolated from leukapheresis or blood from healthy volunteers for development of Gene and Cell Adoptive Immunotherapies.

  • IRAS ID

    136497

  • Contact name

    Karl Peggs

  • Contact email

    k.peggs@ucl.ac.uk

  • Research summary

    T cell gene therapy has been successful in treating patients with malignancies that are incurable beyond a bone marrow transplant. The procedure involves taking patient’s own cells and using a specific virus to infect those cells with therapeutic genes. These cells are then returned to the patient. Cell therapy is the process of introducing new cells into a tissue in order to treat disease.

    Prior to initiating a clinical trial methods need to be optimised and this requires access to sufficient number of blood cells. We hope to do this by blood collection or leukapheresis on healthy volunteers performed at our centre. Leukapheresis is a process in which blood is removed from one arm; it passes through a specialised equipment which removes white blood cells and returns red blood cells and plasma back to the patient via their other arm.

  • REC name

    London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    14/LO/0054

  • Date of REC Opinion

    29 Jan 2014

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion