Written on 08 May 2024.
The AVIS offices in Forlì and Cesena support the collection of samples for the BioRav study, an IRST research project on treatments with dendritic cells for rare tumors
Contribute to scientific research with a seemingly simple gesture, such as a blood donation. IRST “Dino Amadori” IRCCS, AVIS Forlì, AVIS Cesena and Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine Cesena – Forlì / AUSL Transfusion Workshop of Romagna, join forces to promote an initiative which, by concretely contributing to research into rare tumors, will give further value to the donation of blood and blood components. In particular, specific samples will be taken from AVIS voluntary donors in these weeks, according to a well-defined procedure and on an exclusively intentional basis, which will be intended to contribute to the development of the BioRav biological study promoted by IRST.
In particular, BioRav was created with the aim of collecting data and biological samples from people affected by glioblastoma and rare tumors, candidates to be enrolled in a clinical study involving a treatment based on the patient’s own dendritic cells to be performed in IRST IRCCS. The aim of BioRav is to identify and expand the study of new biological, prognostic and predictive markers of response to immune therapy. To better understand the characteristics of immune cells in cancer patients it is important to have similar healthy biological samplesin order to obtain reference values with which to compare them.
“Cellular therapy with dendritic cells is a personalized treatment because it is built with the tumor and the cells of the patient’s own immune system and the BioRav study, which supports clinical studies with this cellular product, is of fundamental importance for us to optimize and further improve the effectiveness of the therapy. For this reason I am very grateful to the AVIS donor associations for the support they have agreed to give us”, points out the doctor Laura Ridolfihead of SC Immunotherapy, Rare Tumors and IRST Biological Resources Centre.
In this, the support of donor associations and the AVIS offices in Forlì and Cesena, actively involved in the recruitment of healthy volunteers, is essential. “We are honored to contribute, thanks to the generosity of AVIS donors, to the development of the research for the BioRav study – they explain Gualtiero Giunchi e Roberto Malagutirespectively president of AVIS Cesena and AVIS Forlì -. Being among the actors of a project in favor of improving public health strengthens the daily activity of AVIS. Forlì and Cesena have chosen to participate jointly in this initiative, as evidence of union and associative cohesion on founding values, such as the contribution to achieving an increasingly higher quality of life and a strengthening of the principles of active participation in community life of citizenship”.
“The study has an expected duration of 5 years – explains the doctor Jenny BulgarelliPrincipal Investigator of BioRav and biotechnologist responsible for the IRST clinical and experimental immunomonitoring platform -; in this phase the collection of data and samples from healthy donors is planned, in collaboration with the Transfusion Workshop of the Romagna Local Health Authority. The enrollment of approximately 20 donors is expected, evenly divided between men and women; in particular by those undergoing plasmapheresis, a procedure that best matches our limited need for material, i.e. two 10 ml tubes of whole blood. The sample collected by the AVIS offices is sent to the Pievesestina Laboratory in Cesena together with the signed consent of the donor and there it will be anonymized so as to make it absolutely impossible to trace the person. Once this step is completed, the peripheral blood samples will arrive in IRST, in the clinical and experimental immunomonitoring laboratory for comparative analyzes on the cells of the immune system and circulating extracellular vesicles”.
“In our Region the institutional and associative components of the transfusion network collaborate and cooperate on a daily basis to achieve objectives of protecting the health of citizens, – adds Dr. Rino BiguzziDirector of Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine Cesena – Forlì / AUSL Transfusion Workshop of Romagna – guaranteeing the availability of blood components and plasma-derived medicines with uniform and high levels of quality and safety. Also in this case, therefore, the transfusion laboratory’s willingness to participate in this research activity could not be missing, sharing the cultural choice of social and civil responsibility which is the basis of the transfusion system.
Any connection between the donor’s name and the test tube number will be eliminated, in order to make the sample completely anonymous and no longer attributable to the donor himself. Donors will be asked to sign the informed consent form for the study, to which all information on the purposes and how their sensitive data will be processed will be attached.
The blood donations dedicated to the collection for the BioRav study will be carried out in the Avis points of Forlì and Cesena, which began on Tuesday 23 April and will continue until the goal of 20 samples.
In the photo from left, Dr. Rino Biguzzi and Dr. Jenny Bulgarelli