Quality standards

In this video, Prof Dr Ivan Van Riet, director of the cell therapy lab at the University Hospital Brussels, discusses the recent update of the JACIE quality standards for the accreditation of cell therapy centers in Europe. These quality standards are revised every 4 years and cover the different aspects of cell therapy, ranging from processing, and collection to the clinical use of cell products. The goal of these standards is to guarantee the best quality of care and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.

Prof Van Riet is also the national representative for JACIE in Belgium and in this respect, he underscores that Belgium continues to be among the top countries in Europe in terms of accreditation rates for cell therapy centers. The latter is likely also influenced by the fact that reimbursement and the possibility to offer unrelated donor stem cell transplantation is linked to JACIE accreditation in Belgium.

With the advent of CAR T therapy and other immune effector cell therapies, JACIE has broadened its scope beyond stem cell transplantation and now also offers centers the opportunity to extend the accreditation to immune effector cell therapy. An important objective for JACIE in this respect relates to the cooperation between treatment centers and the pharmaceutical companies that produce the immune effector cell products. In fact, centers now face a considerable inspection burden, with inspections from national authorities, JACIE and pharmaceutical companies. The goal of JACIE is to come to an agreement with companies that a JACIE accreditation is sufficient for them adopt a more simplified inspection in centers that have been granted a JACIE label.