Stem Cell Discard and storage Dilemma

[applejw]

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 to discard)? FACT requires an option to transfer the cells to another facility for storage after the storage period is over - where is this magical facility? Does anyone have any information about facilities that offer long-term storage for stem cells (hopefully accredited?)?

Looking for ideas and help.

[CM2]

Our transplant doctors are very reluctant to ever discard cells from any living patient. We currently get to toss only products from deceased people and while we are happy we have so many patients still alive after 15 years...Yeah, storage space is becoming desperate. We have the current problem of a 5th freezer being approved for purchase but not having anywhere to physically put it. Offsite storage gives us worries because of loss of oversight (non stem cell people rarely understand our neuroses over strict storage conditions) and concerns for retrieval delays if those products are ever actually requested for use. For those 2 major reasons we havent done more than a quick glossed over search for offsite vendors which turned up 0 offering this service for a hospital transplant program. Local cord banks might be an option? Our current preferred options are creating a second storage-only room for a couple freezers and tanks still onsite or a whole new larger lab. I can guess which way that discussion will end up. Sorry we havent solved this problem either =)

[applejw]

We're looking into getting another freezer as well - no money, no space - this sounds very familiar. It would be great if FACT would remove the requirement to offer alternative storage facilities since they don't seem to exist. Hopefully someone will read this thread and come up with a solution or relief to the requirement.

[CM2]

Well this 5th freezer was actually approved in response to our FACT inspection to satisfy that alternative storage requirement. The inspector did not say it needed to be offsite, only that if any one freezer fails, we have a working backup freezer with the space to contain all the cassettes. So there might be a little play there. The company that sold us our last 3 freezers (Northeast Cryo) does offer rental freezers in case of equipment failure also. Although the logistics of getting a new freezer in, validated, and all the cassettes swapped in a timely way would be challenging its at least something to offer an inspector to say youve thought about the problem.