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An intra-patient comparison of blood cell separators Spectra and Optia in patients and donors undergoing blood mononuclear cell collections at a single institution for subsequent autologous or allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation reveals comparable collection efficiencies

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 51, pages 1007–1009 (2016)Cite this article

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Apheresis is an essential tool in the field of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Nowadays, PBSCs are almost exclusively used in adult and pediatric patients receiving autologous HCT to support the administration of high-dose chemotherapy. In the allogeneic setting, PBSC represents the most widely used hematopoietic progenitor cell source in adult patients, and has largely supplanted the use of bone marrow collections or cord blood units in adult recipients.1 PBSCs are collected from individuals who received a mobilization treatment before apheresis sessions, in order to increase the number of circulating progenitor cells that egress from the bone marrow niches; acutely myelo-suppressive cytotoxic agents, hematopoietic growth factors—mainly rhG-CSF—and CXCR4 antagonists such as plerixafor all mobilize progenitor cells. Patients and donors starting treatment with G-CSF while having normal or near-normal blood counts quickly develop hyper-leukocytosis simultaneously with elevated circulating CD34+ cells; patients receiving rhG-CSF after acutely myelosuppressive chemotherapy are collected during the recovery phase of neutropenia, and therefore have on average lower numbers of WBCs at the time of collection. Additional applications are expected for apheresis and collection of blood mononuclear cells, driven in part by the development of innovative immune cell based therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells.2, 3

For years, PBSC collections have been performed with the same cell separators, one of them, Spectra (Terumo BCT, Lakewood, CO, USA), being used by a large majority of apheresis facilities. The field recently witnessed the commercialization of new generations of cell separators by several manufacturers. Whether these devices provide superior performances for blood mononuclear and hematopoietic progenitor cell collection when compared with historical equipment warrants evaluation. In response to national and international regulations and FACT–JACIE requirements, apheresis facilities need to validate these new devices before substitution of currently used machines. Performing ‘mock aphereses’ obviously raises ethical questions. Although easier to conduct, validation of a new cell separator through benchmarking with historical or contemporary patient populations is not an entirely satisfactory approach, as there is a large interindividual variability in persons who are candidates for apheresis; this was however used to generate data and evaluate the performances of the recently released Optia cell separator (Terumo BCT) in large groups of individuals, as reported in a limited number of publications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all nursing personnel at the apheresis facility – Centre de Thérapie Cellulaire, Institut Paoli-Calmettes, for their long-term commitment to providing superb care to patients referred to our transplant program. They also wish to express their appreciation to Richard Smith, Nelly Besson and Bernard Gendronneau at Terumo BCT for providing regular support to improve our daily practice and professional evaluation, and for critically reviewing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de Biologie du Cancer, Centre de Thérapie Cellulaire, Institut Paoli-Calmettes, Marseille, France

    A Drezet, A Granata, C Lemarie, B Calmels & C Chabannon

  2. Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France

    A Drezet & C Chabannon

  3. Département d’Oncohématologie, Unité de Transplantation et de Thérapie Cellulaire (U2T), Institut Paoli-Calmettes, Marseille, France

    A Granata & C Chabannon

  4. Inserm CBT-1409, Centre d’Investigations Cliniques en Biothérapies, Marseille, France

    C Lemarie, B Calmels & C Chabannon

Authors
  1. A Drezet
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  2. A Granata
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  3. C Lemarie
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  4. B Calmels
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Correspondence to C Chabannon.

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Competing interests

CC has received speaker and consultancy fees from Terumo BCT and SANOFI SA. The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Drezet, A., Granata, A., Lemarie, C. et al. An intra-patient comparison of blood cell separators Spectra and Optia in patients and donors undergoing blood mononuclear cell collections at a single institution for subsequent autologous or allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation reveals comparable collection efficiencies. Bone Marrow Transplant 51, 1007–1009 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2016.41

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