Experience of contamination during autologous cell manufacturing in cell processing facility under the Japanese Medical Practitioners Act and the Medical Care Act

Cell therapy and regenerative medicine technologies require strict cell manufacturing procedures to be defined and addressed. Maintenance of the aseptic environment is critical to preclude extrinsic contamination risks, similar to conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing. However, intrinsic contamination risks exist in all cell manufacturing processes owing to the use of cells as the raw materials that cannot be sterilized, thus giving rise to the primary and secondary risks of cell contamination and cross-contamination, respectively. Analysis of contamination risks was conducted on experienced batches (29,858 batches) for the production of immune cells derived from autologous blood mononuclear cells under the Medical Practitioners Act and the Medical Care Act in Japan. From these batches, 0.06% (18 cases) of contamination occurred, representing low probability of contamination incidence during cell processing. Almost all the causes of these contaminations were regarded to be from the collected blood (intrinsic contamination), and subsequent cross-contaminations were prevented, considering that the secondary contamination risk can be reduced by adequate managements of operational procedures for changeover in aseptic environment.