Guangzhou hospitals expand use of cell, gene therapies

Hospitals and research institutes in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, are expanding the clinical use of cell and gene therapies, with doctors reporting early results in a small number of patients with chronic conditions.

Nansha Hospital of Guangzhou First People's Hospital has recently applied cell and gene therapies in cases involving acute-on-chronic liver failure, ischemic stroke, and knee osteoarthritis, according to hospital officials.

Wang Jianwei, director and chief physician of the hospital's orthopedics department, described two recent cases of knee osteoarthritis that were treated with cell therapy injections near the affected knee joints, aiming to improve the local immune environment and support cartilage repair. During follow-up visits one month later, both patients reported significant relief in knee symptoms and improvement in their daily lives.

Other hospitals are testing stem cells for different afflictions. Pan Guangjin, a researcher at Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Science, said the institute is exploring the use of stem cells to generate anti-tumor immune cells for cancer treatment, and is using stem cell-derived neural cells to treat Parkinson's disease in clinical trials.

"The cause of Parkinson's is the death of and inability to regenerate dopaminergic neurons," he said. "Scientists are now using stem cells to create replacement neurons and transplant them into patients to treat the disease." He argues this treatment is among the closest to clinical application.

Moving stem cell treatment from trials to practice is on the mind of Sun Fei, vice-president of Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health. "The entire industry has recognized this direction, and in recent years, research and industrialization in cell therapy have been extremely active," Sun said.

In 2019, the institute established a standardized cell testing laboratory, which has received accreditation by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment.