Collection of Immunology Specimens From Patients With Cancer or Blood Disorders, and Healthy Volunteers

Launched by UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · Jun 30, 2017

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

This clinical trial is focused on collecting and storing samples like blood, tissue, and bone marrow from patients who have cancer or blood disorders, as well as healthy volunteers. The main goal is to study the immune system and how it can be used to help treat these conditions, especially through immunotherapy, which is a type of treatment that encourages the immune system to fight diseases like cancer.

To participate, you need to be either a patient with a known cancer or blood disorder, or a healthy volunteer without any major health issues like cancer or autoimmune diseases. If you're interested, you should have been seen at specific medical centers in the area. Participants will undergo a simple process of providing specimens, which will be used for research purposes. It's important to know that individuals who take certain medications or have specific health conditions may not be eligible. This study helps researchers better understand the immune system, which could lead to new treatments for serious illnesses.

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• Inclusion Criteria:
• • All patients known to have cancer, an immune-mediated hematologic diagnosis, or a healthy normal volunteer
• • Definition of immune-mediated hematologic diagnosis: diagnoses for which immune dysfunction and/or immune system directed therapy (eg. aplastic anemia, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, immune thrombocytopenic purpura \[ITP\], etc.) are involved
• • Definition of healthy normal volunteer: persons lacking diagnoses of any type of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, non-hematologic autoimmune disease (eg. systemic lupus erythematosus \[SLE\], rheumatoid arthritis \[RA\], Crohn's disease) and not taking any immunosuppressive medications
• • Patients must have been seen in the Norris Hospital and outpatient clinics, or the Los Angeles County (LAC)-University of Southern California (USC) Medical Center or outpatient clinics; healthy volunteers can be recruited without any physician visit appointments since their labs are strictly for clinical research and not for personal health issues unrelated to the project
• Exclusion Criteria:
• • Unable to give informed consent to specimen collection
• • Known human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive status
• • Persons taking any type of immunosuppressive medication are excluded from participating as healthy normal volunteers
• • Any patient for whom specimen collection is judged to be unsafe (for example, for patients unable to establish venous access)