Blood Assurance opens unique cellular therapy center in Nashville
The non-profit blood donation operator, Blood Assurance, has established Nashville's first cellular therapy division, becoming the first such donor facility in Tennessee to do so.
Operators of the 8,000-square-foot center, located on West End Avenue near Vanderbilt University, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday to mark the facility's opening. The facility will act as a typical blood donation center but will also participate in research programs and provide a variety of other specialized treatments.
"Blood banking has evolved. Cellular therapy is one more evolution of what we can do to help," said Blood Assurance's CEO, J.B. Gaskins. "Instead of just treating we can actually participate in helping to find cures."
What's unique about the center
The Nashville clinic will offer the following donation/research options:
Leukapheresis: This procedure involves separating white blood cells from the blood. This is done to decrease high white blood cell counts, to obtain blood cells from patients or donors for later transplant, or for use in research.
All of Us Research Program: This National Institutes of Health Program has a goal of collecting genetic and health data from 1 million volunteers to help develop new medical preventions and treatments. For more information, visit allofus.nih.gov.
The clinic will also do standard blood donations. That includes whole blood, double red cells, platelets and plasma used for patients in local hospitals.
Sipuleucel-T (Provenge): This is cellular immunotherapy for men with advanced prostate cancer. Immune cells are collected from patients and exposed to proteins that target cancer cells. Those cells are then put back in the patients.
More about the science
The All of Us program is creating the world's largest "bio-bank," said Dr. Liz Culler, Blood Assurance's chief medical officer. So, as medical breakthroughs come down the road, collected samples will be tested in the years to come.
"I think that will really change the world," Culler said.
Additionally, the center is collecting white blood cells from volunteers for research purposes. Donors may either be healthy or have particular diseases, depending on the type of research being done. Those cells then may be genetically modified at research centers to develop treatments for disease, Culler said.
"That is going to take the place of bone marrow transplants in the future," she said. "And because it's your white blood cells, your not going to get as sick as you would with a bone marrow transplant."
The hope is that such treatment will work well with a long list of diseases, she said.
Frank Gluck is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at fgluck@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FrankGluck.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Blood Assurance opens unique cellular therapy center in Nashville
