Groundbreaking University of Minnesota Study Has Potential to Improve Survival Rate for Blood Cancer Patients
Researchers hope an experimental cellular therapy will improve overall survival rates for blood cancer patients. The therapy may also offer a new paradigm for treating autoimmune diseases.
University of Minnesota researchers began a clinical trial investigating the use of T regulatory cells (T-regs) to decrease the risk of adverse immune reactions in transplant patients. T-regs are white blood cells that normally regulate the body’s immune responses. Researchers have proven in mouse animal models that infusing T-regs after transplant increases recovery and decreases the risk of graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD). GVHD causes one-third of deaths after transplant and affects more than 60 percent of patients.
GVHD occurs when donated cells attack the transplant recipient. T-regs from a donor may be used to suppress the transplant patient’s own immune system. With the immune system suppressed, the healthy donor’s stem cells and immune cells can grow, helping ward off GVHD.
This is the first human clinical trial in the world that uses T-regs derived from umbilical cord blood. T-regs in umbilical blood occur in higher frequency and are easier to expand in culture. The trial is designed to find the highest possible safe dose of T-regs. Patients in the trial are undergoing double umbilical cord blood transplants for leukemia, other blood cancer, or bone marrow failure.
Making Transplants Safer
“This brings great hope not only for adults and children with cancer but many other diseases as well.” said John E. Wagner, M.D., director of the pediatric hematology-oncology and blood and marrow transplantation program at the University of Minnesota. The experimental cellular therapy has potential for those with leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and other blood and marrow disorders.
University researchers believe there will be no acute side effects with the therapy. “Our quest is to make transplants even safer,” said Claudio Brunstein, M.D., principal investigator of the study.
New Paradigms for Other Autoimmune Diseases
Once safety and effect are known, researchers hope to test T-regs for treatment of various autoimmune diseases, such as type I diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Researchers hypothesize that if T-regs are transplanted early in the disease, the cells may help prevent disease progression. “At the close of this clinical trial, we hope to go right to our first clinical trial with T-regulatory cells in the treatment of newly diagnosed diabetes,” said Dr. Wagner. This study is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the National Marrow Donor Program, and the Children’s Cancer Research Fund.