06/07/2017
Smart Cells will give your baby a unique identification number as soon as you decide to order your collection kit from us. This number will be clearly marked on all items in your collection kit, ensuring full traceability at all times. As soon as your baby’s cord blood is receipted at the laboratory, the processing will start.
When your baby’s cord blood arrives at the laboratory the red blood cells and the white blood cells are separated. The white blood cells, including the stem cells and any cells of current or future therapeutic value, are stored. This is referred to as volume reduced processing or red cell depletion, which is the industry standard method used by leading transplant centres worldwide. It’s also the method we’re most experienced in, and it’s why we were the first company in the UK to carry out transplants.
Once processing has finished and the volume reduced, the concentrated unit of cord blood stem cells is put into a dual-compartment bag, over wrapped and placed into a controlled-rate freezer where the temperature is very slowly reduced to -196°C.
Once it has reached this temperature, the sample is placed into liquid nitrogen vapour in our long term storage tank.
After we’ve processed your baby’s cord blood, we‘ll write to confirm the cell count results. Your collection kit will contain all the mandatory paperwork and will also be clearly labelled with your unique ID number. The paperwork must be returned with your baby’s cord blood for us to process the sample.
