Stem cell separation from cord blood

Abstract

Background: stem cells can be found in places like bone marrow and fat tissue, but the youngest, most flexible stem cells in the body come from the umbilical cord. Several studies have shown the simplicity of umbilical cord blood collection, however, stem cell separation method together with other factors such as unit size, maternal factors such as number of previous pregnancies age of the mother can affect the stem cells harvested from cord blood. The aim of the work was to compare the outcome of three different methods for cord blood stem cells separation. Material and methods: the study was carried out on 17 samples of umbilical cord blood collected from Santo Bambino Maternity Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, University of Catania (Italy). In this study we divided the samples in 3 groups each of 20 cord blood sample and used them to evaluate three separation methods: density gradient separation using Ficoll-Paque, an automated processing and harvesting system using AXP autoxpress thermogenesis and magnetic bead separation method using MACS Columns and MACS Separa-