Optimal umbilical cord blood collection, processing and cryopreservation methods for sustained public cord blood banking

Background aims Umbilical cord blood is an established source of stem cells in patients with hematologic malignancies who do not have HLA-compatible matched related or unrelated donors. The success of an umbilical cord blood transplant depends on the dose of total nucleated and CD34+ cells infused. Therefore, collecting, banking and listing high-quality cord blood units with high total nucleated and CD34+ cell dose are essential. Methods Here the authors describe their cord blood bank's novel collection technique, which involves both in utero and ex utero collection of a single cord blood unit. The authors also evaluated maternal, neonatal and collection parameters that may impact the cell dose. Results Maternal gestational age and race, and neonatal weight and sex correlated with the total nucleated cell dose. Conclusions The optimized collection of umbilical cord blood is critical for its use as a source of stem cells for transplantation.