Suicide Gene Therapy Trial

Summary

Bone marrow or blood stem cell transplantation is used to treat a wide range of life-threatening conditions. T lymphocytes carried in the graft have powerful beneficial effects and play a vital role in the eradication of leukaemia and in fighting infection, but can also damage healthy tissues and cause graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). To safeguard against GVHD, the investigators propose modifying T cells to encode a 'switch' so that they can be eliminated if problems arise. Children receiving half-matched (haploidentical) transplants from a parent are most likely to benefit from this strategy. At present these patients receive blood stem cells from a parent, but the T cells are removed because the risk of serious GVHD is unacceptable. This means that they are much more likely to suffer from life threatening infections or experience a relapse of leukaemia. The investigators want to use gene therapy to produce "safe" T cells which can be used to strengthen the transplant and prevent these serious complications.

Timeline

Start

2011-01

Primary completion

2013-01

Completion

2013-01

Outcome

Outcome not reported

Stopped: “Changes in the clinical practice”

Publications

• Background Qasim W, Gaspar HB, Thrasher AJ. T cell suicide gene therapy to aid haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Curr Gene Ther. 2005 Feb;5(1):121-32. doi: 10.2174/1566523052997497.
• Zhan H, Gilmour K, Chan L, Farzaneh F, McNicol AM, Xu JH, Adams S, Fehse B, Veys P, Thrasher A, Gaspar H, Qasim W. Production and first-in-man use of T cells engineered to express a HSVTK-CD34 sort-suicide gene. PLoS One. 2013 Oct 21;8(10):e77106. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077106. eCollection 2013.

Drugs

Indications