Characterization of ex vivo manipulated hematopoietic stem cells towards the improved production of safe and optimal blood grafts for therapeutical applications

Hematopoietic stem cells have the ability to sustain lifelong production of blood cells and are currently used to treat patients with various blood disorders via bone marrow transplantation. A critical aspect of using stem cells for therapies is their limited availability. Therefore, expansion and production of functional blood cells is essential to improve transplantation and develop new targeted therapies. This project aims to support ExCellThera’s effort in developing the ideal blood stem cell grafts via ExCellThera’s robust expansion and cell engineering platforms to improve patient outcome. Understanding how manipulating these cells in a dish affects their overall behavior is an important part of optimizing the production of cells for targeted therapeutical application. Here, we propose to develop a tracking system to study how individual blood stem cells evolve as we expand them or engineer them for gene therapies. This new platform will allow us to better understand the expansion process to achieve desired cell products and will be used to test various cells for their clinical potential.

Faculty Supervisor:

Guy Sauvageau

Student:

Partner:

ExCellThera

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Agriculture; Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: