Name: Clinical Research Center of Cell Therapy for Neoplastic Disease
Person in Charge: Hu Yu
Brief Introduction: Founded in 2015, the center is the first clinical research center for the treatment of malignant tumor cells in central China, committed to becoming a clinical research center for immunotherapy of malignant tumor cells in sync with the world, a research and development center that can develop new cellular immunotherapy technologies, and a professional training center for tumor cell therapy based in Central and Southern China and radiating to the whole country.
Research Directions:
1. Basic clinical research: cooperate with companies to find antigenic targets that are characteristic of blood and other cancers, establish mature gene engineering, vector construction, and T cell immunotherapy technology; apply the cell immunotherapy technology to clinical practice, and carry out multi-center clinical studies on blood and solid tumor immunotherapy, use cutting-edge technology and interdisciplinary integration to explore and develop methods for accurate diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of malignant diseases.
2. Technology development focuses on the establishment of quality control standards in the process of immune cell modification: develop accurate and reliable quality control methods for key technical links, such as gene recombination, vector construction, T cell transfection and in vitro amplification; establishment of a therapeutic effect evaluation system for cell therapy: evaluate the safety and efficacy of cell immunotherapy regimens based on the results of multicenter clinical studies; development of industry rules for clinical cell therapy: in the clinical practice of cell therapy, explore the best pretreatment and side effects management scheme, and provide a reliable guide for the promotion and application of cell therapy.
The center has developed CD19, BCMA, CD38, CD30, CD22 and CD123 target heads, equipped with cell therapy wards and GMP laboratory facilities. Until December 2019, the center has completed CAR-T cell therapy for 150 patients with refractory relapsed hematologic tumors (including leukemia, lymphomaandmyeloma), with an overall remissionrate of 88.2%, and a maximum disease-free survival of 48 months in one patient. Its research achievements have been reported in more than 20 themed lectures at various conferences of the American Society of Hematology annual meeting, European Society of Hematology annual meeting, Chinese Society of Hematology, and Chinese Hematology Physicians Association, Chinese Cell Therapy Conference and other relevant conferences and have been published in international high-level academic journals as Clin Cancer Res, Am J Haematol, Br J Haematol, etc. In addition, the center was the first in China to write a comprehensive management standard for CAR-T treatment complications, and pioneered the CAR-T therapy bridging transplantation therapy, which has further improved the long-term disease-free survival rate of patients with hematologic tumors. Moreover, the center has successfully applied for an international multi-center clinical research project. It has published a number of research papers on the management of cell therapy complications and the exploration of new therapeutic modes in the American Journal of Hematology, British Journal of Hematology, Chinese Journal of Hematology, Journal of Clinical Hematologyand other relevant journals, which has been highly recognized by domestic and foreign peers.
At the 61st Annual Conference of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in December 2019, the research results of Professor HU Yu and Professor MEI Heng were successfully selected into the Best of ASH and presented by Professor Charles G. Mullighan, a world-renowned hematologist, at the closing ceremony of the conference. This achievement represents the most important breakthrough and future development direction in the field of blood, and it is also the first time that the clinical research of Chinese physicians wins the Best of ASH award.
