Polish doctors have treated a patient with virus-fighting immune cells for the first time in a clinical trial, a milestone that could expand treatment options for stem cell transplant recipients with life-threatening drug-resistant infections.
The pioneering procedure was carried out at the University Clinical Hospital in Wrocław as part of the ALLOVISTA clinical trial, which is testing virus-specific T lymphocytes (VSTs) in patients with drug-resistant cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections.
CMV is a common virus that usually causes few problems in healthy people but can become life-threatening in patients with severely weakened immune systems after allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
The treatment is a form of immunotherapy that uses virus-specific T lymphocytes – immune cells taken from healthy donors and selected because they can recognise and destroy a specific virus. Instead of relying solely on antiviral drugs, the therapy aims to restore part of the patient's immune system, allowing the body to fight the infection naturally.
"We try to rebuild the missing element of the patient's immune system by providing the patient with lymphocytes that can recognize and fight the infection," said Prof. Marek Ussowicz, head of the ALLOVISTA clinical trial team. "This approach uses the body's natural defence mechanisms and gives a chance to patients for whom existing treatment methods have proven insufficient."
The donor cells were prepared from material collected from a healthy, unrelated volunteer by specialists at the Regional Centre for Blood Donation and Blood Treatment in Poznań before being administered by clinicians at the University Clinical Hospital in Wrocław.
The procedure marks the first use of VST therapy in a registered clinical trial in Poland using cells from a healthy, unrelated donor. Previously, the treatment had been available only under hospital exemption procedures.
Prof. Ussowicz said the launch of the trial represented an important step towards making the therapy more widely available.
"Starting a clinical trial allows us to move from single applications to a systematic assessment of the effectiveness and safety of the therapy in accordance with the highest standards of clinical research," he said. "Our goal is to create the basis for the treatment to be available to a larger group of patients in the future."
If successful, the ALLOVISTA trial could pave the way for wider use of donor-derived immune cells to treat viral infections that remain one of the most serious complications following stem cell transplantation. (PAP)
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