Current Methodology Advances in Cell Therapy Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Cell Therapy per definition uses cellular material that is injected or transplanted into a patient with the aim of treating a disease. Cell Therapy approaches are naturally diverse. Approaches can use autologous (i.e., patient self-derived) material or allogeneic cells (derived from either genetically matched donors or from engineered stem cells). One prominent and well-studied example of Cell Therapy applications are autologous CAR T therapies, where patient T cells are genetically engineered to express specific tumor-targeting chimeric antigen receptors. CAR T therapies have proven to be an efficient treatment for a variety of hematologic cancers. Alternatively, stem cell-derived allogeneic therapies use genetically engineered human stem cells or human-induced pluripotent stem cells that will later be differentiated into the desired effector cells, ensuring a much wider target range. Such allogeneic therapy will provide almost unlimited material and can be applied to a larger number of patients. Cell-based therapies are a rapidly developing field with high medical interest. Cell Therapy development uses cutting-edge techniques that are constantly optimized in several fields: generation of appropriate cell sources, genetic engineering of donor cells, differentiation protocols for stem cell-based products and aspects of safety studies, and rigorous quality assurance procedures for Cell Therapy products.

This Special Issue of Methods and Protocols wants to bridge all these efforts and to collect recent advances in methods, procedures, and protocols for all areas of Cell Therapy applications. We are very much looking forward to receiving your invaluable contributions.

Dr. Philip Hublitz
Dr. Kejin Hu
Guest Editors

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• • cell therapy • autologous • allogeneic • stem cell-based therapies • T cell engineering • immuno-oncology • tissue repair