Develop novel assays for assessing cellular and gene therapies

细胞和基因治疗产品必须进行无菌、稳定性、纯度和效力测试。此外，测试临床细胞治疗产品的一致性、一致性和可比性也很重要。测试细胞和基因疗法是具有挑战性的。这些疗法通常是从一个人身上收集的，因此可供测试的材料数量有限。它们通常是立即或在生产后不久输血，因此完成检测的时间非常有限。这些疗法中的许多都是具有多种功能的复杂细胞。对这些疗法的临床效果至关重要的细胞功能通常是未知的。传统的分析方法包括流式细胞术、酶联免疫吸附试验、ELISPOT和细胞培养等，用于分析细胞和基因治疗。虽然这些化验已被证明非常有用，但可以用这些化验分析的因素的数量和类型是有限的。 我们一直在研究使用基因和微型RNA表达分析来分析细胞疗法。这些分析可能只需要使用少量的细胞，并且可以用来评估整个转录组的表达。我们一直在测试全球基因和微RNA表达谱分析的能力，以确定这些分析在评估细胞治疗的稳定性、纯度和有效性方面的效用。我们已经证明，基因表达谱可以检测储存细胞的变化，并检测外周血白细胞(T细胞、B细胞和单核细胞)和造血干细胞之间的差异。基因表达谱也能够检测未成熟和成熟树突状细胞之间的差异，并用于比较不同成熟剂组合产生的成熟树突状细胞。 嵌合抗原受体(CAR)T细胞正被用于治疗许多血液系统恶性肿瘤，然而，这些疗法的接受者的临床结果有所不同，其中一些差异可能是由于变异性，因此CAR T细胞产品之间的效力差异。我们正在使用基因表达分析、mRNA分析、单细胞分析、下一代测序、载体插入位点和代谢组学来确定与这些细胞的临床潜力相关的因素。我们还开发了一种检测方法，可以测量整合到每个T细胞基因组中的CAR载体的拷贝数。 我们一直在评估从SARS-CoV2恢复者身上收集的白细胞的基因表达谱，这些人正在接受新冠肺炎疗养血浆输血。

Cell and gene therapy products must be tested for sterility, stability, purity and potency. In addition, it is important to test clinical cell therapy products for identity, consistency and comparability. Testing cellular and gene therapies is challenging. These therapies are generally collected from a single person so the quantity of material available to test is limited. They are typically transfused immediately or shortly after they are produced so there is a very limited amount of time to complete the assays. Many of these therapies are complex cells that have multiple functions. The cell functions that are critical to the clinical effectiveness of these therapies are often not known. Traditionally, analytic assays such as flow cytometry, ELISA, ELISPOT and cell culture have been used to analyze cellular and gene therapies. While these assays have proven to be very useful, the number and types of factors that can be analyzed with these assays is limited. We have been investigating the use of gene and micro RNA expression assays for the analysis of cellular therapies. These assays can require the use of only small quantities of cells and can be used to assess the expression of the entire transcriptome. We have been testing the ability of global gene and micro RNA expression profiling to determine the utility of these assays for assessing the stability, purity and potency of cellular therapies. We have shown that gene expression profiling can detect changes in stored cells and detect differences between peripheral blood leukocytes (T cells, B cells and monocytes) and hematopoietic stem cells. Gene expression profiling has also been able to detect differences between immature and mature dendritic cells (DCs) and has been useful for comparing mature DCs produced using different combinations of maturation agents. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are being used to treat a number of hematologic malignancies, however, clinical outcomes have varied among recipients of these therapies and some of this variability is likely due to variability, and hence, differences in potency among CAR T cell products. We are using gene expression analysis, mRNA analysis, single cell analysis, next generation sequencing, vector insertion site and metabolomics to identify factors associated with the clinical potency of these cells. We have also developed an assay that measures the number of copies of the CAR vector that have integrated into the genome of each T cell. We have been evaluating gene expression profiles of leukocytes collected from people who have recovered from SARS-CoV2 and are doing COVID-19 convalescent plasma for transfusion.