Chemotherapy leads to cure of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) lead to cure in
less than half of the patients. Stem cell transplantation can be used as an
immunotherapeutic treatment to cure the patient, but carries a high risk of
toxicity and mortality, especially older patients with comorbidities. Moreover,
not all patients have a suitable donor.
We have developed a novel immunotherapeutic treatment, in which we
generate in vitro, starting from mobilized hematopoietic precursor cells, Tcells
that recognize WT1, a tumor antigen that is overexpressed on 70% of
the AMLs. In this project, we will translate our research protocol into a clinical
grade protocol to generate WT1-specific T-cells from patients: the protocol
will be optimized on chemotherapy treated left-over patient mHPC; cell
isolation procedures and cell cultures will be adapted to good manufacturing
practices in our GMP-facility and proper quality control tests will be set up.