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Joaquim Vives, PhD
Banc de Sang i Teixits,
Barcelona, Spain

The Cellular and Gene Therapy (CGT) field has experienced intense activity in research and product development, resulting in the acceleration of approvals of new cell-, gene-, and tissue-based medicines. A new article published in Cytotherapy, the official journal of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT), signed by the ISCT EU Regional executive committee, addresses the challenges associated with developing highly specialized professionals in a global context of workforce shortage in this rapidly growing CGT sector. The authors emphasize the importance of defining suitable education and training programs to bridge the gap between manual processing (laborious and low-throughput, yet the most common setting to date) and industrial manufacturing (scalable and cost-effective), which holds the promise of bringing these novel therapies to a larger number of patients.

Training professionals in CGT is a complex task due to the broad scope of the value chain, which ranges from donor identification, procurement, testing and processing of substances of human origin (SoHO) to patient treatment and clinical follow-up. This endeavour demands specific knowledge encompassing scientific, technical, medical, and ethical aspects of product development, manufacturing, and treatment. However, existing educational initiatives (perhaps overly academic in the form of Master's and PhD programs that require several years of study and research) are not suitable for educating professionals with the required competencies in CGT. On the other hand, short courses and workshops provide only a certain level of training. Therefore a more comprehensive and continuous approach is needed to keep the CGT workforce up-to-date to keep up with the scientific and technical progress.

Recognizing the urgent need to address the development of professionals in the CGT field, scientific societies including ISCT, have taken initiatives focusing on improving training and education in the field. In this article, the authors (i) present and discuss their understanding of the roots of current growth acceleration of the CGT field; (ii) anticipate future workforce needs, and (iii) evaluate potential solutions that seek to adapt, develop and implement current educational and training initiatives. Moreover, they introduce a database of existing training programs to improve the knowledge and competencies of professionals.

Collaboration between regulatory agencies, academic institutions, and industry is essential to create or improve tailored educational and training programs that meet the specific demands of the CGT sector. These efforts will not only enable the training of a new generation of professionals but also facilitate patients' access to innovative therapies.

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