The need for uniform and coordinated practices involving centrally manufactured cell therapies

Cellular therapies have become an important part of clinical care. The treatment of patients with cell therapies often involves the collection of autologous cells at the medical center treating the patient, the shipment of these cells to a centralized manufacturing site, and the return of the cryopreserved clinical cell therapy to the medical center treating the patient for storage until infusion. As this activity grows, cell processing laboratories at many academic medical centers are involved with many different autologous products manufactured by several different centralized laboratories. The handling of these products by medical center-based cell therapy laboratories is complicated and resource-intensive since each centralized manufacturing laboratory has unique methods for labeling, storing, shipping, receiving, thawing, and infusing the cells. The field would benefit from the development of more uniform practices. The development of a coordinating center similar to those established to facilitate the collection, shipping, and transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells from unrelated donors would also be beneficial. In summary, the wide range of practices involved with labeling, shipping, freezing, thawing, and infusing centrally manufactured autologous cellular therapies lack efficiency and consistency and puts patients at risk. More uniform practices are needed.