Abstract
Thanks to the coordinated efforts of four major scientific organizations, this report describes the "novel cellular therapy" activity in Europe for the year 2009. Fifty 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 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 after 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.