Cord Blood Banking and Transplantation in China: A Ten Years Experience of a Single Public Bank

Background

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) has successfully used for transplantation to treat hematologic malignancies and genetic diseases. Herein, we describe the experience generated in a single public UCB bank at Zhejiang Province in China.

Methods

Good manufacturing practice and standard operating procedures were used to address donor selection as well as UCB collection, processing, and cryopreservation. Total nucleated cells (TNCs), cellular viability, CD34+ cells, and colony-forming units were determined, and infectious diseases screening test, sterility test, and HLA typing for UCB units were done.

Results

Only 18.51% of all collected UCB units met storage criteria, and 7,056 UCB units were cryopreserved in 10 years. The volume of UCB units was 95.0 ± 22.0 ml. The number of TNCs before and after processing was 13.32 ± 3.63 × 10⁸ and 10.63 ± 2.80 × 10⁸, respectively, and the recovery rate was 80.71 ± 11.26%. 0.4344 ± 0.1874% of the TNCs were CD34+ cells. The CFU-GM was 32.1 ± 28.0 colonies per 1 × 10⁵ nucleated cells. Based mainly on HLA and nucleated cell content, 26 UCB units were released for transplantation.

Conclusions

A public UCB bank was successfully established in China; collection and processing of UCB units should be optimized in order to gain maximum volume and cell count.