Levine Contributes to Statement from the ISCT Committee on the Ethics of Cell and Gene Therapy

Posted March 9, 2022

The International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) Committee on the Ethics of Cell and Gene Therapy released a statement in February expressing concerns on aspects of a report published in Cytotherapy. The original article, titled “Manufacturing chimeric antigen receptor T cells from cryopreserved peripheral blood cells: Time for a collect-and-freeze model?” raised concerns in regard to its stance on cell banking, as well as the article’s source of funding. Cell banking is the process of storing cells for future use, in this case for cell therapies.

Aaron Levine, associate dean for research and outreach in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and associate professor in the School of Public Policy, is a member of the ISCT committee and contributed to the statement.

The full statement, “The peril of the promise of speculative cell banking: Statement from the ISCT Committee on the Ethics of Cell and Gene Therapy,” was also published in Cytotherapy. It can be read at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcyt.2022.01.007.