Cryostem: Establishment of a National Thematic Collection of Biological Samples Pre- and Post-Allogeneic Hematologic Stem Cell Transplantation for the Study of Graft-Versus-Host Disease

Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) is the only curative treatment for many patients with hematologic disease. Unfortunately, the transplanted immune system can reacts against the patient, inducing Graft-versus-Host Disease (GvHD). GvHD is the leading cause of treatment related mortality and morbidity following HSCT and is expected to increase in the forthcoming years. Pathophysiology and long-term determinants of GvHD are still largely unknown.

The French Society for Stem Cell Transplantation and Cell Therapy (SFGM-TC) launched the CryoStem project in 2011 with the goal of establishing a national biobank on GvHD. CryoStem has been selected and funded to the extent of 5,5 millions € over a period of 9 years by the French Government’s Investissements d’Avenir program. As of today, CryoStem brings together 33 HSCT Units and 23 Biological Resources Centers that actively contribute to a networked, prospective, longitudinal and standardized peripheral blood samples collection with concomitant well documented clinical data.

Patients sampling is scheduled before and after HSCT, depending on the occurrence or not of acute and/or chronic GvHD. Three types of pre-analytical products are processed and stored, according to standardized techniques: viable cells in DMSO, dried cell pellets and plasma. Samples and clinical data are anonymized and centralized in CryoStem-dedicated web-based database application.

Recruitment started in July 2012: currently, about 1,590 patients and 690 related donors have been included. So far, 3,820 blood samples have been processed, corresponding to 48,400 frozen pre-analytical samples. In order to guarantee the quality of frozen samples, an ISO9001 certification of the network is ongoing.

National projects are the only way to acquire the large number of samples needed for statistically significant results in a reasonable time. The collection is on embargo until further notice and the first call for scientific projects is expected to be launched in December 2014.

CryoStem is a crucial step toward progress in human GvHD research: it will allow collaborative studies between leading French and international research organizations and foster technology transfer with potential industrial players whenever possible to eventually improve the translational research on GvHD.