Our laboratory

If your child's umbilical cord stem cells are needed for a transplant, we are able to retrieve the unit and prepare it for transport to a treating clinic very quickly and easily. We have already released stored stem cell units to treatment centres around the world where they have been successfully used in transplants.

Our UK facilities exceed the highest standards of safety and cleanliness. Our laboratory:

• is fully licensed for all umbilical cord blood and umbilical cord tissue processing, testing and storage activities
• is located close to London Heathrow airport - minimising transportation times for customers around the world
• is a state of the art facility built with the latest design and materials
• uses the industry gold-standard system for cord blood processing also widely used in public banking - the Biosafe Sepax system
• has an advanced Facilities Management System to continually monitor the laboratory; is fully alarmed and has an uninterruptible power supply in case of a mains electricity failure

All processing procedures are undertaken in a specialised clean-room by highly trained staff.  We only use our laboratories for processing, including directly associated tests and storage of umbilical cord blood stem cells and umbilical cord tissue stem cells. 

Umbilical cord blood processing 

When your baby's cord blood arrives at the laboratory, it is tested and processed before being placed in long term storage.

The white blood cells, including the stem cells and any cells of current or future therapeutic value, are concentrated into the buffy coat, which we store. Our processing procedure separates and removes the red blood cells and the plasma only. It does not remove the stem cells from the blood. To watch a video explaining the process click here.U

This is referred to as volume reduced processing.

The transplant centres that we have worked with have confirmed that given choice they would opt for red cell depleted units. Cord blood units that are sourced from the public donor banks around the world are typically red cell depleted.

"I need the culture results, maternal ID testing and donor health history. After I receive this and review, we need to perform HLA on the unit, and we need confirmation of viability and CD34+"   Extract from an email from Paediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Centre,  Duke University, USA.

Public Banks, including the Anthony Nolan Trust in the UK, plus the majority of private banks around the world use the same procedure as adopted by Smart Cells International. 

"Initially, cord blood was stored using the same processes for storing peripheral blood. However, cord blood is fundamentally different from peripheral blood and should be processed and stored appropriately. There are a number of steps for processing cord blood, which include; testing the blood, cell counting and processing by red cell depletion or plasma depletion (to reduce the volume)"   Abstract from Technopolis report produced for the Department of Health, January 2009

Our strict criteria for processing and assessing cord blood units ensures that a successful unit will have a high likelihood to be used for your family if someone was to suffer from a disease or illness defined appropriate for a stem cell transplant. 

Umbilical cord tissue processing

Umbilical cord tissue is safely transported in a special solution designed to preserve the stem cells during the transportation. Once it arrives at the laboratory, the umbilical cord tissue is divided into sections and processed immediately. 

The sections are frozen in cryopreservative in vials and stored in a separate vapour-phase nitrogen freezer to the cord blood.

Umbilical cord stem cell storage

Smart Cells International stores your baby's cord blood cells in a specialised cord blood freezing bag.

Cord Blood Transfer/Freezing Bag sets are manufactured to cGMP using validated manufacturing processed that ensure safe, consistent reliable product performance. Each bag is 100% inspected prior to release and is fully traceable by a lot number. The bag sets are uniquely designed to facilitate closed system processing of cord blood stem cells by the volume reduction method. This method results in a high quality sample available for transplantation.

The bag is then over-wrapped in an aluminium cassette.

The cord blood stem cells are slowly frozen, using a controlled rate freezer to slowly reduce the temperature from 4ºC to -180ºC at a predesigned rate.

Your baby's cord blood stem cells are then stored in a vapour phase nitrogen freezer at -196ºC.

Liquid nitrogen vapour storage freezers provide the highest level of sample security,  supporting biomedical application such as assisted reproduction, oncology research, immunology, gene therapy, banking of tissue, bone marrow, stem cells and cord blood.

Your baby's cord tissue is divided into sections and frozen in vials in a cryopreservative.

We slowly reduce the temperature of the sections using another  controlled rate freezer and then store them  in a separate vapour phase nitrogen freezer.  Your baby's cord blood and cord tissue stem cells are stored in separate freezers.