Decontamination of Two Umbilical Cord Blood Grafts Prior to Autologous Administration

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is proving to be a valuable resource of stem cells and currently is being used for a variety of oncological and hematological pathologies and metabolic disorders; in addition, new clinical trials are showing promising results in certain neurological, autoimmune and developmental disorders. More recently the Food and Drug Administration – FDA - has granted approval for the clinical use of cellular therapies with UCB-based products and new therapeutic utilizations are being studied for regenerative medicine; all these developments will increase the utilization of “off-the-shelf” UCB units. As a drawback, contamination of UCB grafts is a significant occurrence (upwards of 5% in most analyses), and even though it consists mainly of non-pathogenic bacteria it can raise serious questions regarding intravenous UCB administration, especially in patients who are not receiving coincidental antibiotic coverage.  Here we report the successful decontamination of two UCB grafts prior to administration without compromising the viability of the stem cells administered, and propose to apply the same principle and procedure to any contaminated graft.