Alliance for Cord Blood Processing

A collaboration for developing a new process for the isolation of stem cells from umbilical cord blood has been announced by GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) and Saneron CCEL Therapeutics (Tampa, FL, USA).

Stem cells from umbilical cord blood have the potential to be used to treat more than 80 malignant, genetic, and acquired diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and immunodeficiency.

"Umbilical cord blood is playing an increasingly important role in the use of cell therapy in the successful treatment of human disease,” said Nigel Darby, vice president of research and development, protein separations, at GE Healthcare. "Saneron and GE Healthcare are working together to provide a solution for a sterile density medium manufactured under GMP [good manufacturing conditions] conditions to meet the growing need for processing umbilical cord blood so that it may be used in cell therapy.”

Ficoll-Paque, a sterile density medium, has been used for 30 years to isolate high yields of mononuclear cells from peripheral blood and bone marrow, but the cell composition of umbilical cord blood is significantly different and demands different separation characteristics. Saneron has developed a proprietary processing technique for the isolation of a heterogeneous population of cells from umbilical cord blood that has shown promising results in preclinical studies. The new version of Ficoll-Paque being developed by GE and Saneron will specifically process stem cells from umbilical cord blood. The final version will be commercialized by GE Healthcare.





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