AlloStem Organisational Aims
The relevance of our objectives will be reflected in the following features:
I) Social and political impact:
By turning “genetic differences” into effective therapeutic weapons the program is designed in conceptual, as well as in practical terms, to provide equal access by children, women and minorities to proper and advanced medical care. This program will provide, during its development and implementation, a large set of professional knowledge and information that will be of paramount importance for the health policy agencies to establish, promote and organize quality control and accreditation procedures in the field of allogeneic transplantation and immunotherapy.
II) Strong interactions between technology and biology through practical applications:
By integrating post-genomic research, we will employ cutting-edge technology that will allow us to identify new tumours and pathogen target motifs that will provide selective immunotherapy in order to generate anti-tumour and anti-viral pathogenic immunity (WP1, WP2). In addition, we will develop and implement new methodologies that will help to modulate the immune response and achieve a higher degree of engraftment by reducing GvHD and increasing GvL (WP3).
III) Innovation aspects and SME participation:
Several members of AlloStem are SMEs with strong backgrounds in the area of immunohaematology therapy. We have already established very strong and productive collaborations on an individual basis and, in the past, exploited individual patents in a very productive way. Although the expected exploitation of products and deliverables of our project are described in detail later on, they can be briefly summarised as follows:
- New diagnostic reagents, such as peptides, that could be used for immuno-targeting, tetramers, etc,
- Clinical grade reagents such as vaccination material and gene transfer vectors,
- Clinical grade cell clones and lines, such as T, NK, mesenchymal, dendritic and other cells that may provide beneficial effects on engraftment, GvHD, GvL and protective immunity against opportunistic pathogens (CMV, EBV, Aspergillus, etc),
- Clinical protocols and SOP's.
IV) Ethical, social, legal and cultural aspects:
As already mentioned, AlloStem has created an Ethics Board integrating experts in ethics, law and social sciences, policy regulations, as well as representatives of patient and donor organisations. The Ethics Board will promote public dialogue on the benefits, advantages and disadvantages of the new developments of stem cell transplantation. This will help AlloStem to provide a uniquely balanced and responsible legal, regulatory and policy framework which includes the scientific basis for health and safety regulations. We will strengthen the links between research fields and other community health policies for women, children and ethnic minorities.
V) Integration of European research:
The AlloStem Consortium has a strong research partnership with the developed and developing nations of the World. We will work together to take full advantage of the promising technologies and biodiversity potential. We will evaluate the social, medical and community impact on developed and developing countries, and try to find efficient ways to make the translation across socio-cultural and economic barriers, which will constitute the basis for future European progress.