The survey on cellular and engineered tissue therapies in Europe in 2009

Thanks to the coordinated efforts of four major scientific organizations, the report describes the “novel cellular therapy” activity in Europe for the year 2009. 50 teams from 22 countries reported data on 814 patients using a dedicated survey, which were combined to additional 328 records reported by 55 teams to the standard European group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) database. Indications were cardiovascular (37%; 64% autologous), graft-vs-host-disease (27%; 7% autologous), musculoskeletal (17%; 98% autologous), epithelial/parenchymal (8%; 73% autologous), autoimmune (9%; 84% autologous) or neurological diseases (3%; 50% autologous). Autologous cells were used predominantly for cardiovascular (42%) and musculoskeletal (30%) disorders, whereas allogeneic cells were used mainly for graft-vs-host-disease (58%) and cardiovascular (30%) indications. Reported cell types were mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSC) (46%), hematopoietic stem cells (27%), chondrocytes (7%), keratinocytes (5%), dermal fibroblast (13%) and others (2%). In 59% of the grafts, cells were delivered following expansion, in 2% of the cases cells were transduced. Cells were delivered intraorgan (46%), on a membrane or gel (29%), intravenously (16%) or using 3D scaffolds (8%). As compared to last year, the number of teams adopting the dedicated survey was 1.7-fold higher and, with few exceptions, the collected data confirmed the captured trends. This year’s edition specifically describes and discusses the use of MSC for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, due to the scientific, clinical and economical implications of this topic.

Source:  Ivan Martin, Helen Baldomero, Chiara Bocelli-Tyndall, Ineke Slaper-Cortenbach, Jakob Passweg, Alan Tyndall. Tissue Engineering Part A. -Not available-, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/ten.TEA.2011.0131.