Frontiers in Oncology

8th Annual Karl G. Blume, MD, Memorial Lecture 

Banks Of 3rd Party Donor-Derived Virus-Specific T-Cells Of Defined Epitope Specificity And HLA Restriction Providing “Off-The-Shelf” Treatment For Drug Refractory EBV+ Lymphomas And CMV Infections In Marrow And Solid Organ Transplant RecipientsErin Kobetz, PhD, MPH

August 17, 2021 

Richard J. O’Reilly, MD is the Claire L. Tow Chair in Pediatric Oncology Research and former Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As Chief of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Services in both the Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine, Dr. O'Reilly pioneered transplantation approaches for patients who lack HLA matched siblings. He and his colleagues introduced the use of marrow transplants from matched unrelated donors and thereafter T- cell depleted transplants from HLA half matched donors for children with lethal immune deficiencies and both children and adults with leukemia. In 1994, he introduced the use of transplant donor T-cells for the treatment of EBV-induced lymphomas. Currently, he is evaluating adoptive cell therapy employing banked partially HLA-matched and appropriately HLA restricted T-cells from third party healthy donors for viral infections and leukemias, conducting Phase I and II trials testing adoptive transfer of these virus-specific and tumor-specific T-cells following T-cell depleted HCT as a therapeutic approach for EBV lymphoproliferative disease, drug resistant CMV infections and leukemic relapse in the post-transplant period.