JACIE Inspector Training Course in Barcelona

24-25 November 2018 in Barcelona

Pere Barba tells us about the JACIE Training Course and his presentation about the standards in Immune Effector Cells. 

The 76th JACIE Training Course was held in a surprisingly rainy and cold Barcelona. Physicians, nurses and quality managers from three continents met together to learn about quality management and accreditation process in the field of hematopoietic cell transplantation. Some of the novelties in this course were all the aspects related to the Immune Effector Cells (IEC) which have also become a hot topic in the quality field. As more EBMT centers get involved in these therapies, there is growing interest in learning how the quality standards will be applied. Since this is a new field and most of the centers have very limited experience with immune effector cell administration, it was a great opportunity to discuss and think together about the best way to apply quality management in this field.

My presentation was about the standards in IECs, including CAR-T cells but also NK and dendritic cells. I tried to summarize the most important aspects of the JACIE standards and reviewed the experience of my center and others in establishing a clinical CAR-T program. During the Q&A time, attendees mostly agreed that due to the complexity of these therapies quality management policies should be applied to the IECs administration, cell processing and patient care. Given the experience in the HSCT field, there was a great consensus in the sense that these therapies should be managed by transplant specialists in transplant units. Finally, most interventions also agreed to ask for a limited number of feasible or practical standards in order to help centers involved in CAR-T and other cellular therapies to implement the accreditation process as quick and easily as possible.

As both speaker and attendee, I found the course a great opportunity to interact with other colleagues involved in the transplant field from different perspectives. Also, it was a great opportunity to learn from others’ experiences since everyone gave their personal thoughts and solutions to common problems helping to address a certain problem taking into account the specific circumstances in your center.  Finally, I found it especially nice to interact with nurses and quality managers with whom I might not easily meet in larger meetings such as the EBMT Annual Meeting.