ANDRE CHOULIKA: We didn't have
any intention of injecting
these type of vials to
patient because we needed
a lot of vials to
be able to file
our clinical trial application.
And this was planned to be done
with the University College
London.
NARRATOR: Before any new
medication or therapy
is considered safe
and effective,
it must first be rigorously
tested through clinical trials.
These trials are
fundamental in determining
an experimental treatment's
dosage and safety
and to identify any
possible side effects.
At the University
College London,
Great Ormond Street Institute of
Child Health, Professor Waseem
Qasim was working with Cellectis
as the principal investigator,
taking the universal CAR
T-cells from the lab to trials.
Normally, this process
can take over a decade,
with nearly endless
layers of approval.
So our questions were what
do you do if your patient is
already so unwell that
you can't collect cells;
or has had so much chemotherapy
that there's no white blood
cells left to collect, that you
think are going to be useful;
how do you do this process
in a way that can be
done quickly and delivered
back to the patient in a timely
manner?
And the answer to
that is perhaps
being able to use a product,
a cell product, that's
been made beforehand,
that can be given
back to multiple patients.
Now in order to do that, we
have to overcome the barrier
of transplantation,
which means if I put
my cells into a
nonmatched individual,
the cells firstly will want to
react against that individual
because they will know the
individuals is foreign.
And secondly, the person
receiving the cells
will try and reject
them because they know
the cells are not their own.
NARRATOR: In affiliation
with Professor Qasim,
Doctor Paul Veys works
on the front line
with patients who
desperately need
new cancer treatment options.
I'll have treated well over
3,000 patients and at least 600
of those will have gone wrong.
So there's a lot of
patients that we lose.
It's unsuccessful.
You've got to be able
to come in the next day.
Even from our failures,
we've learned lots.
And if we hadn't gone
through those failures,
we wouldn't be having some of
the successes we have today.
Has the chest has
always been good?
He's not had any big
chest infections?
NURSE: No.
It's not good.
Let's warm it up.
Sit forward again.
Yeah.
Perfect.
OK.
Big breaths.
