A shared passion for patient care inspires blood and bone marrow transplant and cellular therapy innovation at Ohio State. “You want to cure everyone, period, and we work toward that,” says Marco de Lima, MD, the director of the Blood and Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at The Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). “That’s the motivation and the only currency that matters — helping people.” Click to learn more about blood and bone marrow transplant at The Ohio State University. The OSUCCC-James has one of the largest and most comprehensive blood and bone marrow transplant (BMT) and cellular therapy programs in the country, including new efforts designed to improve the revolutionary CAR T-cell therapy, which removes T-cells from a patient and genetically reengineers them to more efficiently recognize and killing cancer cells. In the past, patients were admitted to the OSUCCC – James during BMT and CAR T-cell treatments for stays of three to five weeks in relative isolation. Thanks to a new, groundbreaking outpatient setting, though, many patients now receive the potentially-lifesaving treatments and return home on the same days. “Our ability to prevent infections has set the stage where we don’t have to admit some patients,” de Lima says. “We will continue to offer inpatient treatment but will continue to expand our outpatient options.” Click to learn more about cellular therapy at the OSUCCC – James. Around 20 patients have already undergone outpatient CAR T-cell treatment at Ohio State. “Of those, 40 percent didn’t need admission to the hospital and the other 60 percent had their admission times dramatically reduced,” de Lima says. “We want to increase those percentages.” In the past, it took up to two months to send and then receive a patient’s re-engineered T cells from labs located throughout the country. “That’s too long,” de Lima says, explaining that OSUCCC – James experts can now re-engineer T cells in house. “We’re treating 14 patients in a clinical trial, and it’s taken us seven days from collecting the cells to re-introducing them.” While Ohio State BMT and cellular therapy innovation is bringing big benefits to Buckeye State patients, de Lima and his colleagues are also sharing their expertise abroad through a partnership with Caring Cross (an organization devoted to providing medical services to underserved populations around the world) and Brazilian health officials. The collaboration enables members of de Lima’s team to provide the technical know-how and training to help experts in Brazil re-engineer cells for CAR T-cell treatment. “This is a very ambitious program to provide CAR T-cell therapy for free within the Brazilian healthcare system,” de Lima says. Click to learn more about cancer clinical trials at the OSUCCC – James.