Aims
The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) Cellular Therapy Group aims to conduct laboratory and clinical research in order to translate and evaluate new cellular therapeutic approaches in the clinic.

Background
SNBTS produces human blood, plasma, cell and tissue products for therapeutic use. It harvests, processes and stores haematopoietic stem cells for clinical transplantation in regulatory compliant GMP clean room facilities. The Cellular Therapy group has participated in several clinical trials of dendritic cells and T cells for cancer treatment over the past 5 years.

Approaches and progress
The SNBTS Cellular Therapy group works in 4 areas:

• The adult stem cell therapy group (group leader Dr Robin Barclay) work on peripheral blood, bone marrow and cord blood stem cells in the context of the haematopoietic system (in collaboration with Alexander Medvinsky), cardiovascular regeneration (in collaboration with David Newby), mesenchymal repair (in collaboration with Brendon Noble) and liver repair (in collaboration with John Plevris).
• The human embryonal stem cell therapy group (group leader Dr Jo Mountford) work on the control of differentiation into haematopoietic and endothelial lineages and collaborate with Paul de Sousa in the development of GMP-grade human ES cells for potential future clinical use.
• The immune tolerance group (group leader David Kilpatrick) work on the development of tolerogenic dendritic cells in allogeneic stem cell transplantation.
• The clinical trialing group work clinical tracking of endothelial cells (with Dave Newby) and corneal epithelial stem cell transplantation (with Prof Bal Dhillon).

Selected publications

• Gallagher RCJ, Waterfall M, Samuel K, Turner ML. 2007. Blood donor derived dendritic cells and cytotoxic T-cells for specific fusion-gene adoptive immunotherapy. Vox Sang 92:351-360.
• Roddie H, Klammer M, Thomas C, Thomson R, Atkinson A, Sproul A, Waterfall M, Samuel K, Yin J, Johnson P,  Turner M. 2006. Phase I/II study of vaccination with dendritic-like leukaemia cells for the immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukaemia. British Journal of Haematology 133:152-157.
• Turner ML. 2006. Prion Reduction Filters. Lancet 368: 2190-2191.
• De Sousa P, Galea G, Turner ML. 2006. The road to provision of human embryo stem cells for therapeutic use: the UK experience. Reproduction 132:681-689.
• Turner ML (editor). 2006. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: managing the risk of transmission by blood, plasma and tissues. Bethesda MY, AABB Press.

Funding
Core funding by Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS)
British Heart Foundation
Chief Scientist Office
Department of Health