The Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Immunology (ITI), based in Mannheim, (website) works with hematapoietic stem cells and the isolation and characterisation of mesenchymal stem cells. ITI belongs to the Faculty of Clinical Medicine Mannheim as part of the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg. The institute is part of the German Red Cross Blood Donation Service of Baden-Württemberg-Hessia. ITI provides regional as well as national supply of hospitals with blood components. It has an established a public cord blood bank for provision of allogeneic UCB transplants. It is one of the only two German centres awarded with a license of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute for clinical use. For cellular therapeutics, a GMP-facility is established authorised by the German regulatory agencies. The research facility of the institute provides all types of cell culture techniques, with a focus on stem cell related techniques and assays. A highly equipped molecular biology laboratory allows PCR-based analyses, DNA/RNA-techniques, gene expression profiling -analyses and gene sequencing.

The Institute of Transfusion Medicine's contribution to the Osteocord project is for establishing and banking cultures of CB-MSC and BM-MSCs, providing defined characteristics using agreed protocols. Immunological profiling of undifferentiated and differentiated CB-MSCs Scale-up according to GMP standards.

Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Immunology, German Red Cross Blood Donor Service, Baden-Württemberg-Hessen GmbH, University of Heidelberg, Faculty of Clinical Medicine Mannheim, Stem Cell Laboratory, Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse 107, 68167 Mannheim, GERMANY

Dr Karen Bieback e-mail

Click on the links to access the other Partners:

1. University of York, UK
2. University Hospital of Odense, Denmark
3. University of Southern Denmark
4. Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering
5. University of Nottingham, UK
6. Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Immunology, Mannheim, Germany
7. Angel Biotechnology, Edinburgh, Scotland
8. EC Bio, Oeiras, Portugal
9. Regentec, Nottingham, UK