An interview with Dr Roger Horton

Dr Roger Horton is our head of clinical innovations & partnerships, overseeing our provision of umbilical cord blood to transplant centres and advising CT&LS clients where cord blood may be advantageous. Here he shares his journey into the world of cord blood and how he helps Anthony Nolan provide an unmatched service. 

What brought you to work at Anthony Nolan?

Having completed my university education in the field of Biochemistry I went on to do a PhD in cancer immunology with the idea that the immune system could be used to “mop up” minimal residual disease if properly stimulated. From there I moved on to do a postdoc also in the cancer field; however, I became somewhat frustrated by the lack of translation from the lab into clinical trials. 

It was about this time that an opportunity arose to work at the newly built Anthony Nolan Cell Therapy Centre in Nottingham; I jumped at the chance because every day would start with a blood product and then finish with a frozen cord unit that could be used to save a life! This brought me closer to the clinic and meant that everything we did could have an impact on a patient's life... much better! 

I initially joined as the quality control supervisor in September 2007, at which point the building was empty and didn't even have any benching! Over the last 17 years we have now worked to build a programme that is renowned worldwide, has helped over 400 patients, and provided thousands of units for research, clinical trials and ATMP development. 

How has Anthony Nolan's cord blood provision evolved since you've been here?

In the early days we didn’t ship anything out at all as we didn’t have enough units in the tank in order to have an HLA match for a patient; it took until 2012 before we achieved “critical mass” and shipped our first cord to a local Nottingham hospital. Our second patient was in Australia and our cord unit was literally the only match available in the world!  

From there we grew both our inventory and our collection capacity; with this growth we began to supply the Anthony Nolan Research Institute (ANRI) with cord blood for their research into T-regs and immune modulation. From this came the idea that cord units that didn’t have enough cells for banking could be used by other research groups, so we began to leverage our contacts through ANRI.  

In 2016 CT&LS was formalised as a service and we began to deliberately grow our provisions for use outside of cord banking. The cord support programme was created shortly after, with the aim to collaborate with transplant centres on all aspects of cord blood usage. By this time we were providing around 36 cord blood units (CBU) for transplant per year, and hundreds of CBU for CT&LS usage. Now we have a business development team, experts in our cord blood provisions for our CT&LS partners, and Cord support is well established (as is our relationship with transplant centres). Cord blood provision for transplant has grown to over 50 units per year and we supply even more cords for research, clinical trials and ATMP development than ever before!   

Where do you think cord blood can offer the biggest advantages to cell and gene therapy developers?

Cord blood is readily available and scalable for starters, so growing a project from an initial phase through to clinical trial and then final manufacture is not a problem. It can also be made available as a frozen product so can be shipped off the shelf.  

Due to its unique properties cord blood is also really good in situations where you may wish to select for and then expand cell subsets – the youthful nature of the cells allows them to expand significantly in the right environment. 

Is there a particular story of a CT&LS client that stands out for you as an example of the kind of impact cord blood can have? 

One of the most exciting projects we support is with our long-time clients Glycostem Therapeutics , who have been working on an immunotherapy product called oNKord. It uses natural killer cells from cord blood, and is currently being investigated in a clinical trial to treat AML, among other potential uses. 

These kind of projects have so much potential to bring new treatments to patients, and show the versatility of cord blood in developing new technologies! 

What are you most excited about seeing develop in the cell and gene therapy field in future? 

For me this is about developing new treatments for patients who currently don’t have any option for their condition, either because it does not yet exist or because current methods are too harsh to tolerate. It is all about expanding available treatments so that we can help treat a broad range of health challenges, and ultimately save more lives! 

Learn more about our cord blood products available.