Completed Heart, Stroke & Blood Cancer

Ex vivo expansion of cord blood and bone marrow stem cells

Funder InnovateUK (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation Plasticell Limited
Funding £1.3M
Period Aug 2015 — Feb 2019

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A single umbilical cord blood donation contains too few stem cells to treat most adults with blood cancer, so researchers have developed a chemical cocktail that can multiply those cells 30 to 100 times in the lab. Bone marrow transplants save lives, but require a close tissue match between donor and patient. Cord blood is less fussy—it does not need perfect matching—so it could treat many more people. The problem is volume: each donation yields only enough cells for a child or small adult. This project aims to solve that bottleneck by creating a clinically approved process to grow cord blood stem cells outside the body before transplant. If the method works, it could turn a single cord blood donation into a treatment for a full-sized adult. That would expand the pool of available donors dramatically, reduce waiting times for patients without a family match, and make transplants feasible for people who currently have no option. The research is squarely applied—it takes a known biological limitation and engineers a practical solution for the clinic.

View original technical description
Patients with blood cancers can usually be treated by receiving a bone marrow transplant from another person. Usually this person has to be a blood relation or have a compatible tissue type to ensure the transplant is not rejected. However, finding such a match is not always simple. For some years now, women have been donating the blood found in the umblilical cord after given birth to their babies. This blood is full of stem cells which are capable of reconstituting the entire immune system of the recipient, furthermore complete matching is not required, so cord blood cells can be used to treat many more patients. Unfortunately the number of cells in each cord blood unit is limited and too small to treat most adults. We have already developed media formulations which in preliminary in vitro studies allow the blood stem/progenitor cells in the cord blood units to be expanded by at least 30-100 fold. With this project we are seeking initially to develop a clinically compliant process to expand cord blood cells ex vivo prior to transplantation so that more patients can be treated with this live saving therapy.

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Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Pre-clinical development of a hematopoietic stem cell therapy product
Resilience Fund (Strand 2) application for project 133873 “Pre-clinical development of a hematopoietic stem cell therapy product”
Stem Cells and Immunotherapies: Improving Bone Marrow Transplantation Outcomes
Development of a non-invasive strategy enhancing haematopoietic stem cell (hsc) potential of human umbilical cord cells
Improving haematopoietic reconstitution in blood stem cell transplantation procedures through the regulation of stem cells and their niches

Original classification

Collaborative R&D

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