Cell therapy strategies

Allogeneic Cell Therapyedit

In allogeneic cell therapy the donor is a different person to the recipient of the cells. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, the allogenic methodology is promising because unmatched allogenic therapies can form the basis of "off the shelf" products. There is research interest in attempting to develop such products to treat conditions including Crohn's disease and a variety of vascular conditions.

Autologous Cell Therapyedit

In autologous cell therapy, cells are transplanted that are derived from the patients own tissues. Multiple clinical studies are ongoing that obtain stromal cells from bone-marrow, adipose tissue, or peripheral blood to be transplanted at sites of injury or stress; which is being actively explored for e.g. cartilage and muscle repair. It could also involve the isolation of matured cells from diseased tissues, to be later re-implanted at the same or neighboring tissues; a strategy being assessed in clinical trials for e.g. the spine in preventing disc reherniation or adjacent disc disease. The benefit of an autologous strategy is that there is limited concern for immunogenic responses or transplant rejection. Nevertheless, an autologous strategy is often costly due to patient-by-patient processing, thus preventing the option to create large quality-controlled batches. Moreover, autologous strategies generally do not allow for product quality and effectiveness testing prior to transplantation, as it is highly donor (thus patient) dependent. This is a particular concern as often the patient functioning as donor is diseased, and this can impact cell potency and quality.

Xenogeneic Cell Therapyedit

In xenogeneic cell therapies, the recipient will receive cells from another species. For example, the transplantation of pig derived cells to humans. Currently, xenogeneic cell therapies primarily involve human cell transplantation into experimental animal models for assessment of efficacy and safety, however future advances could potentially enable xenogeneic strategies to humans as well.