Please note: AABB reserves the right to make updates to this program.
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
2:00 – 3:00 PM Eastern Time
Program Number: 26EL-662
Director/Moderator: Ronit Slotky, PhD, MSc, CABP, Director, Cell Therapies Manufacturing Facility, Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack, NJ
Speakers:
Gene therapy offers a revolutionary approach to treating a broad spectrum of diseases, with some therapies already FDA-approved and many more in clinical trials. This cutting-edge treatment often relies on apheresis to collect a substantial quantity of hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs), the essential starting material. These HPCs are then genetically modified outside the body (ex vivo) to create a therapeutic product. In patients with hemoglobinopathies, their underlying disease can affect mobilization and can make collection more challenging. Managing these challenges is crucial for successful gene therapy manufacturing and ultimately, for delivering effective treatments to patients with hemoglobinopathies.
This program will provide an overview of gene therapy for hemoglobinopathies like sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia illustrating gene editing strategies. The faculty will also explore the challenges inherent in the complex logistics of preparing, mobilizing, and collecting these patients and discuss potential solutions for optimizing these processes.
After participating in this educational activity, participants should be able to:
Registration includes access to both the live and on-demand version of this eCast.
If you are a facility interested in participating in this eCast, simply complete the Group Viewing registration form and AABB will provide detailed instructions to share with your team approximately one week prior to the live program (each team member to register for the program utilizing a promocode). For single viewers, simply click on the Register button below to register.
Please note: registration for the live eCast will close 1 hour prior to the eCast start time. If you register after this time, you will receive access to the on-demand eCast when it is available.
| Single Viewer | Register |
| Group Viewing | Register |
This activity is eligible for one (1) continuing education credit/contact hour for Physicians, California Nurses, California Lab Personnel, Florida Lab Personnel and General Participation credit. AABB reserves the right to reduce or increase the number of credits granted based on the final activity duration. For more information on each credit type please visit our Continuing Education Credits webpage.
There is no financial support for this activity.
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB), which is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Physicians (ACCME): AABB designates this live activity for a maximum of one (1) AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM. AABB designates this enduring activity for a maximum of one (1) AMA PRA Category 1 CreditTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Claiming Credit
Live Activity - Upon completion of the live activity, you will receive instructions to complete your evaluation, which is necessary to claim credit and receive your certificate of attendance/completion (credit must be claimed by the date provided in the instructions). The evaluation can be found by logging into the AABB Education Platform.
Enduring Activity - Once the enduring (on-demand) program is available, you will receive instructions to access the AABB Education Platform. Upon completion of viewing the enduring activity, you will need to complete the evaluation, which is necessary to claim credit and receive your certificate of completion (credit must be claimed by the date provided in the AABB Education Platform).
Program & Credit Expiration Dates:
Disclosure Declaration
It is the policy of the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies to ensure independence, balance, objectivity, and scientific rigor and integrity in all of its CE activities. Faculty must disclose to the participants any relationships with commercial companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. AABB has evaluated, identified, and mitigated any potential conflicts of interest through a rigorous content validation procedure, use of evidence-based data/research, and a multidisciplinary peer review process. The following information is for participant information only. It is not assumed that the presence of such relationships will have a negative impact on the presentations.
Disclosures for the planners of this event can be found here. Disclosures for the program faculty, peer reviewers, and AABB personnel are provided at the beginning of the program.
Patricia Brunker, MD, D.Phil serves as the Medical Director for Patient Services at Massachusetts General Hospital after having served as the medical director of the American Red Cross Greater Chesapeake & Potomac Region for five years and as an Assistant Professor of Pathology, in the Division of Transfusion Medicine, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for eight. Patty's training includes an M.Sc. in biological anthropology and human population genetics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, where she studied host genetics of HIV-1 infection and disease progression in Uganda and M.H.S. from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She did her medical training at Dartmouth and Brown Medical Schools and completed an internship in general surgery and residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School. Her clinical fellowship in Transfusion Medicine at Johns Hopkins was followed by 2 years of postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health on the genetic diversity of the Rh blood group system before taking a faculty position back at Hopkins. She has developed research projects on donor motivations in the African-American community, and basic science work on the genetics of alloimmunization, focusing on pregnancy, using an evolutionary approach to alloimmune responses to transfusion. She has supervised several research projects as part of the Specialist in Blood Banking (SBB) training programs at both NIH and Hopkins as well as a post-doctoral research fellow at Hopkins.
John Manis, MD, is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School & Boston Children's Hospital located in Boston, MA.
Ronit Slotky, PhD, MSc, CABP, is a professor of oncology at Hackensack Median Health School of Medicine and the Director of the Cell Therapies Manufacturing Facility at the Hackensack University Medical Center. She earned her PhD at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, and completed her post doctorate at Columbia University Medical Center studying proteins' structure and function, as well her MSc in Biostatistics at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. Dr. Slotky has been working in the cellular therapy field for over 15 years and has published numerous scientific articles in the field of cell processing. She is the chair of the AABB Cellular Therapy Section Coordinating Committee and a member of the FACT Quality Management Standards Committee. Her current work and research efforts focus on improving cell processing methods and patients' outcomes and providing education opportunities for clinicians and researchers.
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