How it works?
Once you have chosen to have your baby’s cord blood and/or tissue to be collected and stored by Biotech in our Cryo-Save laboratories, you will need to complete an application by phone, email, online or at a private consultation, and make an initial payment.
We will have a collection kit delivered to your home or office in 24 to 48 hours. Do not open this or tamper with the seal – your doctor or midwife will need to ascertain the integrity of its contents before use. Keep this with your hospital bag, ensure that the kit is stored between 15 and 25°C.
Be sure to discuss the fact that you’re collecting the umbilical cord blood and/or tissue with your doctor or midwife so that they can prepare to do the procedure on your baby’s birth day.
When you go into labour or head to the hospital for your c-section, remember to take your kit along with you and give it to the doctor or midwife.
The cord blood and/or tissue will be collected and stored in the special containers that are in your collection kit. Check that both containers have been labelled correctly and packed back into the collection kit – ask your birth partner to do this for you.
The doctor/midwife will complete the Medical History Form from the collection kit, which you will need to sign. This needs to be placed back into the kit for the laboratory.
Contact Biotech within two hours of your baby’s birth to arrange for the kit to be collected and taken to the lab. Again, ask your birth partner or the baby’s dad to do this. They will need to give Biotech the following information: Mom’s full name, baby’s name and gender, hospital, room or bed number, and the time of birth.
There is a pathology (blood test) form inside the kit. Hand it to the nurse in your ward so that blood can be taken to test for maternal infectious diseases. Make sure that these test tubes are placed in the kit before it is collected.
The collection kit should not be refrigerated. A courier from the lab will collect the kit 24 to 48 hours after your baby’s birth. The kit is taken to the Biotech laboratory (in Pretoria) where the blood and tissue that were collected will be evaluated, processed and stored if successful.
How are the cord blood and tissue collected?
A special bag is used to collect the cord blood, which is found in your collection kit.
Ex-utero collection takes place after the expulsion of the placenta and takes about 25 minutes to complete.
You will need a minimum of 25 million total nucleated cells (TNC) per kilogram of patient to be transplanted, meaning that 145 ml of cord blood should be adequate in a transplant of a patient weighing 5kg.
To ensure that as much cord blood is collected as possible, both in-utero and ex-utero collection is done. There is a significantly higher total nucleated cell counts (TNC) when doing both, as opposed to only performing in-utero collection. Additionally, combining these methods is particularly useful when delayed cord clamping is performed.
With in-utero collection, the blood is extracted immediately after the cord is clamped and cut – and before the expulsion of the placenta. This extraction mode requires about 10 minutes and happens quite quickly because uterine contractions allows cord blood to flow more easily.
Once the cord blood is collected, a piece of the cord tissue, about 10 to 15cm in size, is cut and placed in the special container from your collection kit with some saline.
Can I still choose to practice delayed
cord clamping at my baby’s birth?
The short answer is that delayed cord clamping can be performed in a birth where the cord blood and tissue are being collected. You will need to tell your gynaecologist or obstetrician about this, and if you’re using Biotech’s MyNurse function please be sure to talk to her too, so that everyone is properly prepared for the procedure.
Some things to bear in mind include:
UK’s National Institute for Health and Care guidelines recommend that women who have just given birth wait for at least one minute before having the umbilical cord clamped – unless there are concerns about the baby. This allows more blood to reach the baby, and may help to prevent anaemia.
The World Health Organization’s recommendations indicate that delayed umbilical cord clamping (i.e. not earlier than 1 min after birth) is recommended for improved maternal and infant health and nutrition outcomes.
Studies in full term babies have shown that the transfer of approximately 80ml of blood by one minute after birth, reaching approximately 100ml at three minutes after birth.
Research has shown one of the key factors to successful cord blood transplants is the volume of cord blood infused. The greater the cord blood volume, the better the clinical outcome of the treatment. Therefore, extended delays in clamping – beyond one minute – is likely to have a negative impact on the amount of cord blood that may be collected for storage. This ultimately affects whether it will be enough to be used for future medical treatments.
What happens after the cord blood
and tissue has been collected?
Once we receive your collection kit with everything in it, the cord blood is processed before it is stored. All our processing procedures comply with international quality standards.
Biotech uses automated volume reduction equipment (Sepax2®, Biosafe SA), operating in a closed, sterile system. This is compliant with GMP- and GLP regulations as well as at the point-of-care.
No operator intervention is required during processing, which means that operator-influenced processing errors and contamination are largely eliminated.
Sterile, single-use kits are used with FAMCORD application specific software protocols, which result in total nucleated cell count (TNC) recovery rates of more than 80%.
If your baby’s cord blood and/or tissue samples do not comply with the minimum quality standards, they may be rejected at this stage by the laboratory. Statistically 10% of the samples are found unsuitable for storage. The Laboratory Medical Director will contact the parents if the sample is found unsuitable for storage.
The cord blood and tissue units are stored in the vapour phase of liquid nitrogen between –196°C and –150°C in a 24-hour monitored facility in Pretoria.
Once a year, a validation of the quality of the stored cord blood units are performed on test samples (not on your baby’s cord blood unit).
Once your samples have been processed successfully, they are stored for future use using a procedure called cryopreservation,.
The final cord blood bag is labelled, double-bagged and placed in a stainless steel cassette to protect the stem cells.
They are then cryopreserved at a controlled rate, freezing at 1 – 2 °C/min to optimise viability from 4°C to -80°C.
A 5,5% DMSO mix is used as cryoprotectant to optimise post-thaw viability.
You will receive an annual report to verify the storage status.
They can be stored in this way for 20 years or more.
