TVHS opens stem cell processing lab to expand biotherapies

Located at the Nashville VA Medical Center, the new stem cell processing laboratory will provide TVHS with the capability and functionality to treat aggressive blood cancers and autoimmune disease orders. 

“With our own stem cell processing lab, we are essentially paving the way for us to expand,” said Joel Trushinski, laboratory supervisor for stem cell processing at TVHS. “We will have a lot more storage and capacity to do our own work [and] allow us to perform more stem cell transplants and different types of biotherapies, including Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR T.” 

There are three parts to the program: apheresis, processing and infusion. The goal of this process is to essentially replace cancerous or damaged cells with healthy cells developed from patient’s own bone marrow. 

To extract stem cells, the clinical apheresis team cultivates cells from the patients themselves. During chemotherapy and drug mobilization, bone marrow can be pushed so hard that stem cells will transfer into the peripheral blood, the flowing blood of the body. These cells are collected and concentrated by the processing lab, and then transplanted so the patient’s adult stem cells will replace the diseased bone marrow.  

Trushinski believes the lab can offer the opportunity to provide Veterans with more intricate and potentially viable ways of treating different types of leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma and other diseases. 

“This is a very unique accreditation in that we have Veterans, adults and children, with the collaboration with Vanderbilt University,” Trushinski said. “So, we have three different categories of patients we're treating with stem cell transplants, which is very cool.” 

The processing lab has an active transplant program with the apheresis and infusion team. The apheresis clinic at TVHS recently expanded to a new space to double the capacity of procedures to harvest stem and T-cells. This clinic is the only Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy accredited program in the country for the VA. The accreditation in cellular therapy also allows TVHS to perform CAR T-cell therapy, according to Richard Hicks, nurse manager for the apheresis clinic TVHS. 

With the stem cell processing lab, TVHS will provide more CAR T-cell therapy, where the patient’s own immune cells are reprogrammed with viral vectors to fight cancer. CAR T-cell therapy is a developing process with currently seven products available in the market, and more than 700 [products] are in clinical trials right now, Trushinski said. 

“It’s a very, very cool process that is just absolutely exploding all over the scientific market right now,” Trushinski said. “And now that we have our own processing lab, we can be a part of it as well and offer that service to our Veterans.” 

TVHS previously contracted Vanderbilt University Medical Center to conduct the laboratory work and storage for stem cell processing. TVHS will continue to work with Vanderbilt after the development of the lab. 

“Financially, there was a great incentive to build our lab and run it for far less expense,” Trushinski said.