Transfusion Medicine and Therapeutic Pathology
Overview
The Division of Transfusion Medicine and Therapeutic Pathology, serving as the therapeutic arm of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, comprises the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) blood bank and transfusion service, an immunohematology reference laboratory, an apheresis/infusion unit, a hematopoietic progenitor cell processing laboratory, and two GMP Clinical Cell & Vaccine Production Facilities (CVPF) for the manufacture of novel cell therapies. Its facilities and programs are accredited by the AABB, FACT, and CAP.
The Division’s very active clinical services provide over 65,000 blood and blood products per year to HUP patients through the blood bank and transfusion service while performing 5,000 procedures per year in the apheresis/infusion unit on outpatients and inpatients diagnosed with a variety of hematopoietic, immunologic, oncologic, and genetic disorders. The Division’s hematopoietic progenitor collection laboratory processes and reinfuses stem cells and commercial CAR-T products for several hundred patients per year. The CVPF/CACT GMP facilities currently support the manufacture of novel cell therapies for over 2 dozen Penn Medicine clinical trials in the areas of cell and gene therapy.
The Division consists of nine faculty members who provide medical oversight and consultation for these clinical activities and/or facilitate numerous interdepartmental clinical trials and translational research efforts. Each faculty member has their particular area of academic interest and receives support through funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), private industry, and non-profit foundations.
Highlights
• provides comprehensive transfusion medicine physician consultative services 24/7
• provides state-of the-art therapeutic apheresis procedures, including LDL-apheresis
• performs novel hematopoietic stem cell collection and cell processing procedures, including those for hematopoietic cell reconstitution and adoptive immunotherapy including commercially-available FDA-approved CAR-T therapies
• performs the manufacture and release testing of hundreds of engineered cell therapy products per year including novel CAR-T cells, dendritic cell vaccines, CRISPR-edited cells, and other products for treating cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases
Faculty
Don L. Siegel, MD, PhD, Director
Nicole Aqui, MD
Vijay Bhoj, MD, PhD
Andrew Fesnak, MD
Carl June, MD
Taku Kambayashi, MD, PhD
Bruce Levine, PhD
Una O’Doherty, MD, PhD
Daniel Powell, PhD
Adjunct Faculty
Margaret Keller, PhD
Senior Director, National Molecular and Genomics Laboratories
Director, American Rare Donor Program
Sandra Nance, MS, MT (ASCP) SBB
Emeritus Senior Director, Immunohematology Reference Laboratory (IRL), Penn-Jersey Region, American Red Cross Blood Services
