RESUMO
SUMMARY: BACKGROUND: Umbilical cord blood (CB) is widely used for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and holds promise for the development of innovative medicinal products. In order to find out whether the conditions for collection and storage before processing might have an impact on the quality of CB preparations, viability and the clonogenic potential were assessed. METHODS: CB was collected under field conditions. Flow cytometry was used to determine leukocytes, CD34/CD45+ cells, viability, and nucleated red blood cells (NRBC). Clonogenic activity was determined using isolated mononuclear cells (MNC). RESULTS: Neither plasma citrate concentrations nor storage temperature (within 24 h) affected cell viability or colony formation. After storage for 49-80 h, leukocyte viability declined by about 16% compared to CB stored up to 24 h. In contrast, the clonogenic activity and CD34/CD45+ cell content were not affected. A higher gestational age was associated with a lower yield of clonogenic activity compared to midterm deliveries. NRBC varied widely (median 7.3%; range 0.63-17.3%) without relation to gestational age or colony formation. There was a close correlation between the percentage of viable CD34/CD45+ cells and colony formation (r = 0.77 for CFU-GM; r = 0.75 for CFU-C). CONCLUSIONS: The content of viable CD34/CD45+ cells represents the clonogenic activity of CB preparations. Therefore, determination of viable CD34/CD45+ cells should be generally performed as a routine quality control assay.
RESUMO
Today, sterility of established parenteral drugs including biologicals, such as plasma derived products, is practically guaranteed. Bacterially contaminated products are extremely rare exceptions owing to the efficiency of the manufacturing processes in the pharmaceutical industry. In contrast, the manufacturing processes of cell based medicinal products or tissue preparations show much less defined conditions. The sterility of source materials cannot be guaranteed in many cases. As a rule, these source materials cannot be sterilised, as it holds true for the final products. Furthermore, the established methods for sterility testing are not applicable for cell preparations. Sterility of a restricted sample does not guarantee sterility of the whole preparation. Thus, small amounts of residual bacteria in the product can be overlooked and can grow up to enormous numbers during storage and shipping of cell based medicinal products. Considering these problems, there are some parallels in the warranty of microbial safety of cellular blood components. Therefore, the experiences collected in transfusion medicine in the past decade can be successfully used in the production of cell based medicinal products. Comparable to the situation regarding cellular blood components, there is a need for new principles in rapid bacteria detection.