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Inducible Caspase 9 Suicide Gene To Improve The Safety Of Allodepleted T Cells After Haploidentical Stem Cell Transplantation., Siok-Keen Tey, Gianpietro Dotti, Cliona M. Rooney, Helen E. Heslop, Malcolm K. Brenner

Faculty Publications

Addback of donor T cells following T cell-depleted stem cell transplantation (SCT) can accelerate immune reconstitution and be effective against relapsed malignancy. After haploidentical SCT, a high risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) essentially precludes this option, unless the T cells are first depleted of alloreactive precursor cells. Even then, the risks of severe GVHD remain significant. To increase the safety of the approach and thereby permit administration of larger T cell doses, we used a suicide gene, inducible caspase 9 (iCasp9), to transduce allodepleted T cells, permitting their destruction should administration have adverse effects. We made a retroviral vector encoding …