Development of autologous immunotherapies for cancer and leukemia from umbilical cord blood
Biohellenika R&D developed cancer immunotherapy protocols with autologous hematopoietic cord blood stem cells. Immunotherapies are personalized and targeted treatments, which are used in combination with other drugs to effectively treat cancer. Today 44 clinical trials are using umbilical cord blood to create immunotherapies for cancer, lymphomas and leukemia, while recently it has been announced that immunotherapies have reduced classic allogeneic hematopoietic transplants by 50%. Immunotherapies using autologous umbilical cord blood are based on the creation of dendritic cells, which are specialized for the specific malignancy antigens of the individual patient. Umbilical cord blood has an advantage over other sources, because it provides the largest number of highly active dendritic cells in a short time. Biohellenika's R&D developed a colon cancer immunotherapy protocol from umbilical cord blood. This treatment was tested on a colon cancer cell line and was highly effective. This protocol was published in the international journal, Differentiation 125 (2022) 54-61, and the company subsequently funded the development of a new immunotherapy protocol to treat leukemias. This protocol concerns the treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia, which usually appears after 60 years of life and the survival of patients with the usual treatments is short.