Advancing Stem Cell Therapy and Equity in Patient Care
Jeff Auletta, MD, discusses his key takeaways from the 2025 Transplant and Cellular Therapy Meetings.
Jeff Auletta, MD, senior vice president of health equity at the National Marrow Donor Program and chief scientific officer of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, discusses his takeaways from the 2025 Transplant and Cellular Therapy Meetings.
Specifically, Auletta highlights the emerging science in stem cell transplants and cell therapies, including treatments like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. He also discussed topics presented at the meeting that went beyond scientific advancements, including important discussions on advocacy. He highlights that these topics emphasize the social vulnerability of patients and the need for systemic change to increase access to life-saving therapies.
According to Auletta, addressing these disparities requires a collective, ecosystem-wide effort in order to ensure better representation and access for vulnerable patients in stem cell transplants and cell therapies.
Transcription:
0:10 | Overall, I think that the Tandem Meetings were fantastic, with regards to the emerging science, both in terms of stem cell transplants and cell therapies—those therapies that either are directed against infection in the patient or malignant disease like CAR T cells. So, it was a great meeting in terms of hearing the advancing science and collaborating with folks, but also the advocacy in terms of, as an ecosystem, understanding the social vulnerability of our patients and wanting to make a system-level change in order to get more patients to transplant and these life-saving therapies.
0:51 | And that is really going to take an ecosystem response, and that's what we want to do—is really drive forth the message that, you know, for lots of reasons, these patients have a vulnerability and aren't well represented in terms of stem cell transplant or cell therapy. And we, as an ecosystem, really have a moral responsibility to address these things, and that's what we're doing as a whole, in terms of an ecosystem.
