Bioprocess Engineering for Therapeutic T-cell Manufacturing

新兴的培养细胞疗法有可能治疗或治愈多种退行性和致命性疾病，目前正在进行数百项细胞免疫治疗的临床试验。2017年批准的前两种免疫细胞(T细胞)疗法非常有效，可以治疗没有治疗选择的血细胞癌。与使用 化疗是为了杀死癌细胞，这些T细胞免疫疗法是基于增强人类的天然防御系统来杀死癌细胞。这项提议的重点是生产T细胞，以抑制其他免疫细胞追求错误的目标，例如在移植排斥或自身免疫性疾病中。这些细胞疗法可以取代免疫抑制药物的使用。 通常无效且有许多负面副作用的药物。尽管细胞免疫疗法将给医疗治疗带来革命性的变化，但要使这些疗法对许多需要它们的患者来说成为现实，还必须克服许多挑战。由于来自人类捐献者的T细胞培养非常复杂，我们必须增加对用于生产这些治疗性细胞的过程的了解和控制。这是我们项目的重点。我们将提高治疗性细胞的产量，以便每个细胞捐赠者都能治疗数百名患者。我们还寻求启用联网的加拿大技能和资源，以促进临床试验。通过降低细胞生产成本和增加用于治疗的细胞数量，我们将为降低总体成本做出贡献，使这些治疗在经济上对我们的医疗体系可行，并广泛用于拯救生命。我们T细胞制造技术的开发将与加拿大细胞治疗制造设施系统地联网，以广泛地告知这一技术和其他依赖细胞制造的有前途的临床治疗方法。

Emerging cultured cell therapies have the potential to treat or cure multiple degenerative and fatal diseases, and hundreds of cell immunotherapy clinical trials are currently underway. The first two immune cell (T-cell) therapies approved in 2017 are highly effective, and can treat blood-cell cancers for which no treatment options remained. In contrast to using chemotherapy to kill cancer cells, these T-cell immunotherapies are based on amplifying natural human defences to kill cancer cells. This proposal is focussed on producing T cells that suppress other immune cells going after the wrong target, such as in transplant rejection or autoimmune disorders. These cell therapies could replace the use of immunosuppressive drugs that are often ineffective and have many negative side effects. Although cell immunotherapy is poised to revolutionize medical treatments, many challenges must be overcome to make these therapies a reality for the many patients needing them. As the culture of T cells coming from human donors is very complex, we must increase our understanding and control of the processes used to produce these therapeutic cells. This is the focus of our project. We will improve the production of therapeutic cells so that hundreds of patients can be treated with each cell donor. We also seek to enable networked Canadian skills and resources to facilitate clinical trials. Through reducing the cell production costs and increasing the number of cells produced for treatment, we will contribute toward reducing overall costs, to make these treatments economically feasible for our healthcare system and widely available to save lives. Our development of T-cell manufacturing technology will be systematically networked with Canadian cell therapy manufacturing facilities to broadly inform this and other promising clinical treatments that depend on cell manufacturing.