Canadian Blood Services

Purpose

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada, and while immunotherapy shows promise, it faces challenges such as high costs, long production times, and severe side effects. The Maganti laboratory at Canadian Blood Services has developed a small molecule cocktail to improve the production of "off-the-shelf" immune cells from cord blood stem cells. However, this technology needs optimization for clinical scale production of chimeric antigen receptor-expressing NK (CAR-NK) cells using good manufacturing practices (GMP). This proposal aims to create a GMP qualifying manufacturing protocol to produce CAR-NK cells (expressing a novel CD20 CAR) at clinical scale, making immunotherapy more accessible, affordable, and safer, ultimately improving cancer treatment in Canada.