Tissue, stem cells, and bone marrow

Prior to a HSCT transplant our blood bank receives 2 specimens for ABO Rh from the donor. One is peripheral, the other is an aliquot from the actual stem cell collection. For many samples upon centrifugation of the stem cells, there is barely a cell button of rbcs remaining. We do MTS gel testing & only need 10ul of cells. When aspirating the rbcs at the bottom of the cell button, they become contaminated with stem cells, and any gel typing is junky looking and the control usually comes out positive. We often end up using an extremely dilute specimen and perform tube typing, disregarding the flocculation caused by the stem cells and make an educated decision by th…

Hi all, I was wondering if any of you have any experience dealing with donor breast milk. Our maternity wants to have it available (only when needed) and of course, this has fallen on my desk. If an infant is in need they would aquire the milk from another local hospital and then want to have it stored in the blood bank. I am just wondering how it is handled in other hospitals and is it really necessary to have it stored in the BB. Thanks!

Is anyone using a contracted apheresis service to collect stem cells? If so, is the service FACT accredited? Our hospital outsourced therapeutic apheresis and stem cell collections to our contracted dialysis service. They are primarily a dialysis provider. I think we were their first stem cell site. I am concerned over how FACT will view this. The Blood Bank does assume responsibility for labeling the apheresis product.

Who is responsible for managing transplantable tissues at your facility? With newer regulations in place, and more expected, some are moving this all to the blood bank. If this is happening, how will (are) you managing: Trace/Track-ability requirementsVendor qualificationsInventory - storage location and dateRecalls / patient notificationsWhat problems are/will you have in the BB?

It's called T.C.S. and apparently it's quite revolutionary! What kind of organizations would benefit from such software? Based on the internal info that I have, the company selling this software has already scored projects with big centers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South East Asia and Canada. The software at a glance: T.C.S.: A MODULAR SOFTWARE FROM COLLECTION TO TRANSPLANTATION - Donor Management - Product Management - Document Management - Donor / Recipient Link - Mother / Baby link - Processing / Transformation Management - Laboratory tests / Results - HLA - Sample and Tissue Archiving - Recipient Management - Medical Release - Labeling - Inventory Management - Import of…

Hello All, I was wondering if anyone has had problems with the OriGen CryoStore Freezing Bags. I have validated these bags for my lab and found them to be acceptable. I have yet to put them into routine use. Thanks, AT

Need some help in making a standard protocol for stem cell collection and DMSO mixing.

We have a patient who has undergone a BM transplant (patient originally group O, now been given BM from an A donor). His group is coming up mixed field but this is because we are still transfusing him with O blood every 7 days or so. My question is how can we tell when he has completely transformed to his new blood group (A) when he keeps having O blood? We would like to give him his new group but not sure what the next step shoud be?

We currently do skin grafts with AlloSource. We have a surgeon that wants to bank the left over skin. According to the package insert the skin is only good for 24 hours once thawed. However, he says at the other hospital he does surgery's for they allow him to keep them 7-10 days in a special solution. My question is what is the liability of not following package insert? Any comment will help

Hi, Does anyone out there have experience (good or bad) with the BD Fortessa Flowcytometer? Have you validated CD34 on it? Thanks in advance for your response. Sarah

Are transplant facilities charging for storing stem cells (marrow or apheresis products - NOT cord blood) beyond the initial time period after collection? If so, what are you charging and are you sending a bill (annually, quarterly, monthly?) from the lab? Our agreement states that the fee after 5 years is $100 but may increase without notice and the hospital financial staff says that "everyone charges a lot more than $100" so I'm trying to find out what labs are actually charging for storage and how it works for them. If you like, also let me know how long you store products for...

I have been transplanted from Transfusion QA to Surgical Services. Every day I find out about products derived from non human/ non cellular. We only thought about human tissues to humans but at AABB in Montreal at Assessor training, I learned that all biological products regardless of source should be assessed it the Medical Director was indicated is "tissue oversight". Our Transfusion Committee has a Tissue Focus group and the chair of the Transfusion Committee is the Transfusion Medicine Service Medical Director. We though we were on top of things but this woke us up. The first wake up call was qualification of suppliers documentation. The sales representatives t…

We are an active transplant facility transplanting approximately 140 patients per year - allogeneic, autologous, unrelated - PBSC, marrow and cord blood. We've run out of storage room for frozen products which consist mainly of autologous peripheral collections and aliquots of CD3 cells for potential DLI. We are accredited by FACT, CAP, and AABB and need to rework our storage policies so that we can continue to grow with the program and have room for new patients. What are other facilities using as their storage duration and how do you get the physician to agree to discard after the storage period is up (even when they signed the agreement initially and the patient wants …

Information and references on Donor Lymphocyte Infusion would be appreciated. Thanks

What is the CD34 count in the total aulogous PBSC collects that is sufficient for an adult? For a Pediatric patient? Thanks Liz

We seem to be doing abyssmal with our CFU assays on proficiency surveys. Our assays are okay with 'live' products and correlate well with engraftment. But we are not comparing well with our peers on surveys - we've actually tried 2 different vendors for these. Can anyone share what they do for CFU assays for surveys - do you wash the cells pre-plating? What concentration are you using? Or can someone share their procedure for CFUs? Many thanks!

What is the minimum peripheral blood CD34 count at which you would perform an autologous PBSC harvest, for adults and for pediatrics? Thank you Liz

Hi, I was wondering if any one in the cord blood banking biz is requiring follow up on medical hisotry/status of mothers/donors of cord blood units? Thanks in advance for your response. Sarah

For those of you collecting HPC's using the Spectra AutoPBSC program, what do you have your harvest and chase volumes set at? We collect autologous HPC's only. After years of doing collections using the MNC program with operator control we went to the Auto PBSC several months ago. As expected, we saw the counts in our collections decrease. For our last patient we set the harvest volume at 5 ml and the chase volume at 6 ml. That seemed to make an improvemnt. Other than cryopreserving, we do not manipulate the HPC's post collection and again, our collections are autologous only. Does anyone with Auto PBSC experience have suggestions on which direction we should go in, volum…

Our Transfusion Service is assuming responsibility for managment of frozen tissues. We are considering the issue of these tissues in an Igloo cooler with dry ice so that upon return the tissue "may" be suitable for reissue. Has anyone experience with this? pros and cons?

We are looking into setting a wider temperature tolerance range for the QC of our liquid nitrogen temperature measuring devices. We use a couple of different types of devices, some of our models utilize probes that connect to a thermometer or a datalogging device, and in these types, I understand the tolerance of the device and of the attached probes compound; one has to be added to the other to get the true acceptable tolerance. We use the liquid phase of Liquid Nitrogen to create a stable environment at -196 C. We frequently struggle to meet +/- 2 degrees Celsius, much less the +/- 1 degree tolerance used for the higher temps. Is anyone out there using a temperature tol…

Like many hospital Blood Banks, we have been handed the (shared) responsibility of storing and tracking bone and tissue. Our LIS is antiquated (hopefully we'll be upgrading in a year or two or three...) and cannot really handle all the new product types, so we're currently using manual logs. I've recently been given some information on Nu-Tracker (through Nutech) and was wondering if anyone else is using the system and if so what are your experiences. Thanks!

I am looking for a CORD BLOOD BANK in Florida. 1) What should I look for when I am searching for CORD BLood Bank? 2) Is there any licensure I should look for? 3) How do I ensure their quality and reliability? 4) How do I make sure they will not sell my CORD BLOOD to anyone? 5) How do I make sure they will not go bankcurupt and I will loose my precious resource? 6) DOes it have to be in FLORIDA?

We are planning to move into a new laboratory in the near future and will need to move 7 large LN2 (vapor) freezers that are full of HPC products. It's in a different building, but the move can be accomplished through underground pedestrian tunnels- about a 7 minute walk. We would like to move the freezers without emptying them of the products since we do not have adequate swing space to move the products to. Has anyone done this and can you suggest a way to secure the products so that they dont get jostled during the move? Any advice would be appreciated.

I am not a BB tech like most of you, so I can use your help on a few things: 1. How does the hematocrit of peripheral blood compare with the hematocrit of aspirated bone marrow? 2. Same question as above, but for Ca2+ instead of hematocrit. 3. I know that glass tubes will trigger the contact activation coagulation cascade because of the anionic surface. How about plastic? If a quantity of bone marrow is aspirated into a typical plastic syringe to be almost immediately transferred into a collection bag containing an effective quantity of an anti-coagulant, do you need to pre-coat the syringe with a bit of anti-coagulant? I say "almost" immediately because the hematol…