INTRAPATIENT COMPARISON OF AN INTERMITTENT AND A CONTINOUS FLOW CELL SEPARATOR FOR THE COLLECTION OF PROGENITOR AND STEM-CELLS FROM THE BLOOD

Background and Objectives: Continuous-flow and intermittent-flow blood cell separators (CFCS and IFCS) are both used to collect stem cells f rom the blood to rescue patients undergoing myeloablative treatment fo r cancer. Materials and Methods;: We designed a study to compare the c ollection efficiency of the two systems. The continous-flow Cobe Spect ra and the intermittent-flow Haemonetics MCS-3P were used to collect c ells on consecutive days from 9 patients mobilised with G-CSF with or without chemotherapy. Blood obtained before leukapheresis and the leuk apheresis product were analysed for their content of red and white cel ls, platelets, CD34-positive cells, GM-CFC, CFC-E, and BFU-E. An extra ction ratio was calculated. Results: We found that the CFCS extracted about 4 times more mononuclear cells per unit time, 3 times more CD34- positive, and 4 times more clonogenic cells than the IFCS, The subject acceptability of the two systems was similar. Conclusion: The CFCS is a more efficient system for stem cell collection. IFCS requires a lon ger harvesting time for the same result.