Nucleus of Cellular Therapy - NuTeC

Abstract

The Nucleus of Cellular Therapy - NuTeC will be founded on the union of the Regional Blood Center of Ribeirão Preto (Hemocentro RP) and Butantan. Hemocentro RP expertise in cellular therapy will be added to Butantan excellence in the development and production of health applied products to develop CAR T cell therapy. The activities to be conducted by NuTeC are aligned with the scope of this call for the formation of a Problem-oriented Research Nucleus, in the health theme area, focusing on the research line on advanced therapies. NuTeC general objective is to make this promising therapy available to a greater number of patients. Therefore, it will be necessary to scale up and optimize the process of CAR T cell production. Among the specific aims of this proposal we include: I) Scaling up anti-CD19 CAR T cell production according to good manufacture practices (GMP) for treating a large number of patients with CD19+ lymphoid neoplasias; II) Expanding the scale of production of viral vectors in GMP; III) Developing innovative immunotherapies based on the allogeneic transplantation of universal CAR T cells (U-CAR) or NK cells, expressing chimeric receptors against tumor cells; IV) Implementing new vectors in the process of CAR T cell generation that might result in patents for application in other tumor types and obtaining higher safety profile products; and V) Knowledge exchange between participating institutions. Thus, this project will allow the implementation of large-scale CAR T production in Brazil for the treatment of patients with (CD19+) hematological neoplasias. Moreover, the same production platform might be used for CARs designed to other targets that may be used for treating other hematological neoplasias, as well as solid tumors. The results of this project will enable the appropriate production for the safe and effective use of CAR T cells in cancer immunotherapy. (AU)