News Hub

Daniel J. Weiss, MD, PhD
President, ISCT
United States

Greetings and hope everyone is enjoying summer in the Northern hemisphere and otherwise doing well across the global ISCT family.

There continues to be increasing activities in CGT globally, both good and bad. ISCT continues to maintain a central and critical role in these and we will endeavor to keep doing so. We’ll touch base on several of these issues further below.

First, though, let's revisit the three goals set for the first 100 days of the presidency:

1) Integrating with Head Office

This has been a successful ongoing process. As Head Office continues to expand its personnel and capacities, the bandwidth for scope of activities and ISCT member-based initiatives is being more clearly and positively defined. One notable upcoming action will be installment of a Communications Director in September. This is an important move that will enhance and expand visibility and transparency around the many ISCT activities and initiatives. This will also include a fresh look at the ISCT website for potential revamping for additional clarity.

2) Enhance Regional Involvement

To promote global CGT, ISCT remains on a continuing learning curve to appreciate and encompass regional practices and nuances into an overall cohesive strategy. This was recently exemplified by the ANZ Regional Meeting held in July. This was a highly successful event with large enthusiastic participation. However, there were organizational bumps along the way in recognizing and incorporating regional customs and practices. While having a satisfactory outcome, this highlighted the need to have close ongoing engagement between Head Office and regional officers and membership.  As with all issues, transparency and visibility in ongoing engagement is the best solution. Similar approaches are in process for the other ISCT regions with focus on the upcoming inaugural Asia regional meeting taking place in September.   

3) Defining the Scope and Activities of the New Chief Medical Officer

ISCT’s new CMO, Dr. Jaap Boelens, has been highly active in reaching out to the different regions and stakeholders for input on how to implement outreach activities for the ultimate goal of enhancing the ability to bring CGTs to patients. The central goal remains to expand education of and outreach to both the clinical investigators and importantly the clinical caregivers, including but not limited to physicians, APPs, nurses, pharmacists, and hospital administrators who will be on the ground administering CGTs. Comprehensive findings and proposed action plans will be presented to the ISCT Board of Directors and considered in detail for implementation at the ISCT strategic retreat to take place in September. 

Other Notable Activities

ISCT remains a strong and growing presence in global CGT. This is of critical importance in helping shape the science, manufacturing, implementation, and regulation of CGT products and therapies. As some examples of some recent activities:

• ISCT is a signatory and central motivating factor on both individual organizational statements and those crafted along with sister societies on a number of positions including recent opposition to proposed changes in grant proposal review at the US National Institutes of Health.
• ISCT will be a signatory on a position statement to be presented to the Vatican on human heritable genome editing and also on a World Health Organization Global Strategy for Donation and Transplantation.
• Head Office and ISCT leadership recently met with the FDA to re-engage and craft ways of mutually beneficial activities. This is in parallel with continued ISCT leadership at the US National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering Regenerative Medicine Forum.
• The number and breadth of ISCT training and educational opportunities continues to expand on a global scale.
• ISCT members continue to recognized as leaders in CGT by a number of organizations and governmental/regulatory bodies including recognition by the 12th annual Medicine Maker Power List, in the space of Advanced Therapies, and by Scholar GPS.  Congratulations to all involved!
• Cytotherapy’s impact factor continues to grow. Congratulations to Chief Editor Ed Horowitz, MD, PhD, and all of the Cytotherapy staff.

Looking Ahead

One goal for the near future is to further incorporate tissue engineering with focus on the intersection with CGT.  This is a broad endeavor with rich potential including opportunity to partner with sister tissue engineering societies to explore the many possibilities.  Tissue engineering will be highlighted at the next ISCT global meeting in Toronto 2027 in a number of venues including a dedicated Scientific Signature Series.

Another area to be revisited is to develop a philanthropic arm of the ISCT.  We are well positioned for this and one potential deliverable would be creation of a research grants program for young investigators offered by the ISCT.  The logistical issues involved in doing this are not simple but hopefully there will be a good outcome.

ISCT is also mindful of issues around participating in global and regional meetings, notably registration, travel, and housing costs.  This is an issue with all scientific meetings, not just ISCT, and will be continued to be addressed on an annual basis by Head Office.  Another issue at ISCT meetings is that concerning childcare.  While ISCT itself cannot offer childcare, increased interaction with the management of the meeting venues to clarify childcare options will be actively pursued.

However, along with the good there is bad, notably in the United States where an increasing number of initiatives undermine responsible implementation not just of CGT but across the scientific and medical arenas.  The ISCT Ethics in Cell and Gene Therapy Committee is undertaking a number of initiatives to provide patient and other stakeholder education as well as position statements that will hopefully help to counter some of these initiatives.

Despite this, the CGT field is vibrant and ISCT continue to play a central role.  To this end, if interested in participating in any of the above activities, reach out to Head Office.  In parallel, encourage your colleagues to join ISCT to further enhance our growing membership.  I also want to continue to hear from the broad ISCT membership about ideas, issues, concerns, etc you may have.  Please reach out to me via email and we can engage in conversation.

Best Regards,
Dan