The Sidney Weisner Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunobiology at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, is located in the Ullmann Building in the Sharett Institute of Oncology.

Components

The Center includes: the Sidney Weiser Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation; the Braunstein Department for Cancer Immunotherapy; a day care unit and an outpatient clinic.

The Center also has a bone marrow donor bank connected to all international search agencies and a cord blood bank, which serve patients in need of a donor from Israel and abroad.

Basic and clinical research laboratories include the Baxter-Hadassah Research Center and GMP-like facility, a Cell Processing Center, the Danny Cunniff Leukemia Research Laboratory, and a production facility for synthesis of small molecules for immune regulation and cancer treatment.

There is also an apheresis unit for harvesting stem cells and lymphocytes for transplantation and immunotherapy, and a cryopreservation facility for the long-term preservation of cells for utilization by patients who have undergone high dose chemoradiotherapy.

The Center also has an animal facility, an important component in the pre-clinical setting, for testing innovative biological procedures and molecules for control of cancer and the immune system, and a fully licensed GMP facility for the commercial production of vectors and cell preparation. 

Approximately 150 transplantation procedures are carried out yearly for patients with hematological malignancies, solid tumors and a wide spectrum of non-malignant life-threatening diseases, including genetic and metabolic disorders.

Treatment includes autologous and allogeneic transplantation using matched or mismatched family donors or unrelated donors, and bone marrow, blood or cord blood as sources of stem cells.  Stem cell transplantation is performed at all ages, even in utero, for diseases that can be diagnosed during early pregnancy. 

The clinical facility consists of a 20-bed department, which is scheduled to be expanded to 26 beds in the near future, including two to three beds for infants and children in the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Unit in the Department of Pediatrics.  Pre- and post-transplantation patients have access to the Department’s Day Care Unit, while infant outpatients are treated in the Pediatric Day Care Unit. 

The Department provides consultation services for outpatients and patients in need of bone marrow transplantation, immunotherapy and regulation of autoimmunity, as well as for those suffering from immune deficiencies and genetic diseases treatable with gene therapy and cell therapy.

Patients from around the world have been treated at the Center, and all are welcome to consult or receive help.

Research

The Center’s clinical research focuses on the development of new treatment modalities based on innovative biotechnologies for a range of diseases that may be curable by cellular therapy and/or immunological manipulations. New therapeutic regimens that consist of less intensive chemotherapy and more effective immunotherapy are already being clinically applied. They have proved their ability to reduce short- and long-term toxicity and mortality, and are well-tolerated and relatively safe for patients of all ages.

The research activities of the Department are concentrated on the following areas:

v      Improving methods for safer and more effective stem cell transplantation for the treatment of malignant and non-malignant disorders

v      New approaches for cancer immunotherapy

v      Development and clinical application of tumor cell vaccines

v      Gene therapy for cancer and genetic disorders

v      New approaches for the treatment of autoimmune diseases based on stem cell transplantation and immune regulation

v      New approaches for the induction of transplantation tolerance to cellular and organ allografts and xenografts

v      Study of the biology and plasticity of hematopoietic stem cells derived from cord  blood, and their clinical application

v      New approaches for the treatment of AIDS and resistant viral infections

v      New approaches for the enhancement of immunological reconstitution

v      Development of new drugs, focusing on small molecules for regulation of the immune system and autoimmunity

v      New immunotherapy protocols and procedures that focus on adoptive allogeneic cell therapy, cytokines, targeted chemotherapy and tumor cell vaccination, are already being clinically applied for resistant acute and chronic leukemias, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes and metastatic solid tumors, as well as adoptive allogeneic cell mediated immunotherapy for hematological malignancies, utilizing naïve, cytokine- and tumor-specific or rather tumor-reactive lymphocytes, and cytokine research.

The work being carried out on new cancer cell vaccines constitutes an attempt to up-regulate and stimulate the patient’s immune system to fight residual tumor cells using specific and non-specific agents and tumor-specific antigens as well as allogeneic tumor cell vaccines containing common antigenic epitopes.

In parallel, new approaches are being developed to down-regulate and control the immune system towards induction of specific unresponsiveness, with the aim of reducing self-reactivity in life-threatening autoimmune diseases on the one hand, and inducing permanent and specific transplantation tolerance to bone marrow, tissue and organ allografts on the other.

Much effort is being devoted to the control of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Work is also proceeding on gene therapy with the aim of manipulating abnormal stem cells and T cells serving as anti-cancer effector cells for the treatment of certain immune deficiencies and, hopefully, other genetic disorders in the future.

Recent research projects involve stem cell plasticity, focusing on the regeneration of bone and cartilage for the correction of the osteo-hematogenic complex, and bone and joint diseases. 

A recently established chemistry laboratory is engaged in the design of new molecules for better control of the immune system and for targeted cancer therapy, with emphasis on small molecules that can be orally administered.

The Center participates in international multi-center prospective randomized studies involving large numbers of patients, thus contributing to the work of international teams devoted to improving treatment regimens for malignant and non-malignant diseases, designed to answer many of the questions still extant through well-controlled clinical trials.

More information on the Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunotherapy and the research units that operate within the framework of the Cell Therapy and Transplantation Research Center can be found in the articles listed below.