Processing of Umbilical Cord Blood | What happens in lab

Once the umbilical cord blood get collected immediately after the delivery , it then reached the lab where the processing of the blood gets starts for extracting out the desired stem cells which are of use.

Since the blood is very crucial and if not processed in time may turns into clot and is of no use afterwards, due to which the it is very essential to proceed with the processing of blood as soon as possible. 

Generally blood consist of many different types of cells namely Red Blood Cells (RBC's), White Blood Cell(WBC's), Platelets, Hematopoetic Stem Cells (HSC's) and plasma and the main motive behind cord blood processing is the extraction of Hematopoetic Stem Cells (HSC's) only and discarding the remains.

Process of Umbilical Cord Blood processing

Initially the sample get inspected and reviewed.Then technicians will proceed with processing.

Please find below the flow chart and explanation for each method  of cord blood processing :

Fig 1: Methods Of Umbilical Cord Blood Processing

Manual methods of Umbilical Cord Blood Processing

1.Density Gradient solution - This process involves separation of different layers of blood components based  on the principle of gravity using the centrifuge. Once the blood gets separated in to the layer,one layer will be buffy coat which is of use as it contains stem cells and rest will be discarded.It is necessary to make sure that there will not be the presence of even a single red blood cells because having so will restrict the sample usage to the donor only and will produce toxic effects or rejection if used by a different recipient.

Fig 2 : How Density gradient will lead to separation of buffy coat.

2.Hydroxyethyl Starch Solution -It is a process of recovering stem cells by red blood cells depletion.This further involve manual separation of white blood cells by sedimentation with chemical hetastarch to ensure that cord blood units which are being extracted are on an average 99 % pure.

Automated methods of Umbilical cord Blood Proessing

1. AXP - It stands for AutoXpress Platform, which is functionally a closed and fully automatic system for the processing of cord blood and extracting the stem cells.It is an integral component of CBR's proprietary Cell Advantage system. CBR has the highest published average stem cells recovery rate of 99% which is considered best in the the industry.

*AXP and AutoXpress are registered trademarks of Cesca Therapeutics.

2. Prepacyte CB - This process involves red blood cell depletion upto 99% and leads to highest recovery of Colony forming units (CFU),which in a general sense are the stem cells which are used for the treatment of the patient.Discarding all the red blood cells from the blood is very essential which will results in less toxic effects post the treatment.

3. SEPAX  and SEPAX 2 - Both are the fully automated closed system system for the efficient and consistent processing of umbilical cord blood. Both the devices belongs to Biosafe SA .However SEPAX 2 is highly advanced as compared to SEPAX.

Check the difference between sepax and sepax 2.

There are many companies which deals with the cord blood processing and different technique is being used by each of them for the processing and recovery of stem cells however choosing the right technique and using it in a right way is all what is important for getting the stem cells which will be useful for the mankind.

Umbilical Cord Blood

Umbilical Cord

Umbilical cord is a pipe like structure which connects baby and mother and helps in the transmission of nutrition to baby during the nine months of gestation period.

Umbilical Cord Blood

The blood which flows inside the umbilical cord is known as the umbilical cord blood and consist of large amount of stems cells which are undifferentiated in nature and are responsible for the development of baby during the gestation period.

Usually this Umbilical cord and the blood are discarded by the doctors at the time of delivery of the baby or else kept by the family members who believe in superstitions and old rituals. But apart from that as this blood which we thought of as waste is a rich source of stem cells and now a days is being preserved and used by many people for the treatment of various kind of life threatening  diseases ,cure of which was not possible in the past and there are many more disease on which the research is going on.

Umbilical cord blood is considered equally important as embryonic stem cells and plays very efficient role.Previously cells from the bone marrow were being used for the treatment but nowadays umbilical cord blood stem cells prevails.