Cell Therapy

BCA works with various companies in the cell therapy and regenerative medicine markets.  In 2014, BCA generated over $10 million in custom cell collection services to cell therapy and biologic’s companies.

Advanced Therapies

The BCA Advanced Therapies Network represents tens of thousands of donors, thousands of technical experts, in hundreds of facilities across the US.  The network supports the development and delivery of advanced therapies with services related to cell, gene and tissue starting material, processing, testing, manufacturing, quality control, storage and supply.  Click to view our Advanced Therapies website.

Collections

BCA has considerable experience working with cell therapy companies to ensure a reliable, high-quality source of cells for use in their therapeutics. BCA works with cell therapy companies to identify, contract with, and train member and non-member centers capable of doing blood or tissue-based cell collections. Cell collections are used as the biologic source material for either autologous or allogeneic cell therapy treatments.  Some collections are used relatively unmanipulated while others are either extensively expanded or modified or used in conjunction with scaffold, matrices, and/or other biologics or devices. BCA members provide cell therapy companies and organizations with cells derived from whole blood, apheresis collections, cord blood, leukocyte-rich products, bone marrow, birth tissue, etc..

Processing

In addition to providing collection capabilities for cell therapy companies, many blood centers in North America are experienced in performing cell isolations, purifications and processing. BCA members employ a wide-array of cell selection techniques/systems including density gradient, positive/negative beads, elutriation, centrifugation, etc. Cells can be collected from healthy donor, donor-type or disease-specific donors, or patient-donors and can be collected per standard protocol or per client-specific procedures. Processing and delivery volumes, configurations, and containers can also be per site-standard or per client specification. For further details, see our Cells or Tissues sections.

Storage

Many BCA centers provide storage and local logistics services for stem cell transplants and other cell therapy products.

Specifications

All cell and tissue collections, processing and storage tissues are provided in compliance with client specifications, protocols and regulatory requirements. All tissue products can be provided as research-grade materials or, where required, in compliance with clinical-grade, cGMP regulatory standards. All BCA Blood Centers hold required FDA and state licenses and many hold various voluntary accreditations by AABBFACT, and AATB, and several comply with relevant EU and ISO standards.

Consulting

BCA also provides consulting services to clients needing assistance with respect to the acquisition or processing of human-derived biological materials and their storage, distribution and/or associated logistics. Contact Lisa Shaffer to speak more about how BCA might assist with your cell collection needs or services.