High-efficiency volume reduction of cord blood using pentastarch

Human umbilical cord blood (UCB) has been used successfully to treat a vari ety of genetic, hematological, and oncologic disorders. However, the low nu mber of hematopoietic progenitor cells available in donated cord blood samp les limits transplantation of cord blood to children and small adults. Redu ction of the volume of umbilical cord blood is widely used in cord blood ba nking to reduce the storage requirements in large-scale UCB banks. Unfortun ately, during the volume reduction process, up to 40% or more of the progen itor cells are lost using current reduction methods. This study describes a highly reproducible, double collection technique using Pentaspan to reduce UCB volume by red cell depletion, This results in the preservation of crit ical hematopoietic progenitor cells. The final volume of the leukocyte conc entrates (LC) was 19.8 +/- 0.4 ml with 95% red cell depletion. The recovery of nucleated cells (NC), mononuclear cells (MNC), CD34(+) cells and colony -forming units (CFU) following double collection was 89%, 94%, 96%, and 106 %, respectively, This is significantly higher than the recovery from single collections, where recovery was 74%, 77%, 84%, and 91% for NC, MNC, CD34() and CFU, respectively. The double collection technique provides an effici ent and highly reproducible method for the preparation of UCB for long-term storage and transplantation.