At Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), a facility was established early in the new millennium to safely undertake the complex manipulation and management required to teat and store cells destined for human use. The Philip S. Orsino Cell Therapy Facility is a state-of-the- art facility providing the infrastructure needed for the implementation of cell manufacturing in support of cancer patients.

This facility at Princess Margaret Hospital serves multiple purposes:

To support cell therapy research by providing cell processing for investigator-initiated trials

To service the needs of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program

To provide a full array of manufacturing and consulting services to external commercial and academic partners

Just recently, the Stem Cell Transplant Program has been granted FACT accreditation (Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy), the gold standard for high-quality medical and laboratory practice in cellular therapies. Founded in 1996, the key objective of FACT is to promote high-quality patient care and laboratory performance in the belief that a valid accreditation must assess both clinical and laboratory aspects. It is a non-profit corporation co-founded by the International Society for Cellular Therapy and the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation for the purposes of voluntary inspection and accreditation in the field of cellular therapy.

FACT accreditation is a major milestone for this PMH program and reflects the efforts of an entire team for their consistent hard work and unflagging devotion to providing quality care in stem cell transplant medicine for patients.