Overview
The stem cell therapy market is valued at $2.7 billion, currently consisting largely of the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplant market. HSC therapies are growing at roughly 10.6% compound growth rate and the advancement in stem cell therapies is broadening beyond the treatment of hematological malignancies into the treatment of cardiovascular, neurological, and other disorders. Blood products, perhaps the most established cell therapies, serve a supportive role in HSC transplant, and both blood and marrow provide raw material for the manufacturing of several novel cell therapies, including stem cells and immune cell therapies. With promising early results in trials with NK cells, CAR-T cell, antigen-specific T cells, mesenchymal stem/stromal cells, and others, the field will only continue to expand. With a decline in scientists in blood-based research, it is critical to the success of the field of cell therapy to focus efforts on training current researchers, as well as new investigators. New investigators as well as scientists who may be trained in the fundamentals of blood-based research may lack experience scaling up the techniques from the bench to the bedside.
Program Directors
Allison Hubel, PhD, College of Science and Engineering, and David McKenna, MD, Department of Laboratory Medicine have received NIH Research Education Program (R25) funding to develop an individualized training program to offer scholars the opportunity to gain experience in the advanced techniques used to process blood and stem-cell based therapies, the sophisticated assays used for product characterization and post-treatment patient assessment, and to learn the regulatory requirements of cell-based therapies. The intent of this integrated education program in development and clinical practice of cell-based therapies is to be instrumental in countering the decline of blood-based investigators and fostering advances in the treatment of hematological and other disease. The program will offer short-term educational experiences in specific techniques to participants in order to further enable their planned research careers in blood research.
Funding
Short term salary support is available; the amount granted will be determined individually and prorated to the training term. Travel stipends to present an abstract or attend an appropriate national meeting may also be available.
Assistance to secure short term housing can be provided.
Affiliated NHLBI R25 Training
Institute for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery
Virginia Commonwealth University
Pittsburgh Intensive Training in Hematology Research (R25)
University of Pittsburgh