Annual Report 2023
Department of Cellular Therapy Processing
Takahiro Fukuda, Wataru Takeda, Keiko Irie, Hidetomo Fukumoto, Ryuichi Narita, Terumichi Akiike, Shinpei Hiromatsu, Tetsuro Isobe, Satoshi Hatakeyama, Kenjiro Saito, Tsubasa Hiratsuka, Kotomi Suse, Sayaka Takeuchi, Noriko Takahashi, Saori Nakabayashi, Yuki Kase, Maemi Soma, Kazuya Nakanishi
Introduction
The Department of Cellular Therapy Processing was established in 2020 as a shared department at NCCH to appropriately handle the increasing demand for cellular therapy in recent years. We support cell collection, preparation, and storage for hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and new cellular therapies such as Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy.
The Team and What We Do
Our department consists of 2 physicians, 11 clinical engineers, and 6 medical technicians. In fiscal 2023, the number of cell collections was 13 for autologous peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC), 21 for related PBSC, 11 for unrelated PBSC, and 4 for unrelated bone marrow from Japan Marrow Donor Program (JDMP) donors (Table 1). We performed 22 related peripheral blood stem cell transplantations (PBSCTs) (including 16 HLA-haploidentical), 26 for unrelated PBSCTs, 14 for cord blood transplantations (CBTs), and 10 autologous PBSCTs.
Table 1. Number of each type of procedure
As for CAR-T therapy, we started the full-fledged operation of Yescarta® along with Kymriah® and Breanji®. The number of CAR-T therapy has increased in fiscal 2023. We performed CAR-T therapy for 49 patients.
As for TEMCELL®, which is an off-the-shelf bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell treatment for refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), we are responsible for the storage and preparation of cells. The number of preparations was 58 in fiscal 2023. We made a substantial contribution to the treatment of severe acute GVHD.
Research Activities
When introducing CAR-T therapy at our hospital, we needed to review our conventional cell preparation operations and develop and build a quality management system adapted to CAR-T therapy. We reported our experience at the conference (Nakabayashi JSTMCT 2023). We reported a case of PBSCT involving a donor with EDTA-induced pseudothrombocytopenia (Tsubokura M, Clin Case Rep. 2023).
Clinical Trials
We are involved in clinical trials of CAR-T therapies. The number of autologous lymphocyte harvests in clinical trials was 3.
Training and Educational Activities
We have trained several certified apheresis nurses from the Japanese Red Cross Society to developtheir skills in PBSC harvesting.
Future Prospects
Along with HCT, CAR-T therapy is expected to increase in the future. It is expected that the role of our department will increase more and more, thus we need to expand our system to provide appropriate treatment for all patients.
List of papers published in 2023
Journal
1. Tsubokura M, Kojima M, Nakabayashi S, Takahashi N, Takeuchi S, Aruga Y, Ikeda C, Maezawa N, Okazaki K, Uchida S, Watanabe M, Aoki J, Ito A, Tanaka T, Inamoto Y, Kim SW, Matsushita H, Fukuda T. EDTA-induced pseudothrombocytopenia in hematopoietic stem cell donor. Clin Case Rep. 2023 Apr 5;11(4):e7023. doi: 10.1002/ccr3.7023. eCollection 2023 Apr.