Perinatal Mesenchymal Stem Cell Banking for Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine

Collagenase Impacts the Quantity and Quality of Native Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells Derived during Processing of Umbilical Cord Tissue

“…Stem cells hold great clinical promise, especially those from perinatal sources-including umbilical cord blood (UCB), umbilical cord tissue (UCT), placenta, amnion, and chorion [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] -since these tissues possess young, fetal-derived (and in some cases maternal-derived) stem cells that can be collected postgestation. In order to harness the great potential of these cells and their products in treating ailing patients clinically, regulatory-friendly collection, processing, cryopreservation/thaw, and quality controls need to be developed and implemented today.…”

“…When the unit is needed for therapeutic use, the manually minced tissue is thawed, washed, and placed into culture to derive an ex vivo expanded, manipulated mesenchymal stem/stromal cell (MSC) product. This process will take weeks to derive the needed cell numbers for transplantation and cells are sometimes cultured in the presence of fetal bovine serum (FBS), which could be a bottleneck for autologous transplantation and clinical utility, with more stringent regulatory approval 1,2,8 . Although often overlooked by the scientific community, there is also evidence that ex vivo expansion accelerates stem cell exhaustion and/or senescence, resulting in significantly reduced in vivo stem cell functional activity (i.e., potency) 1,2,8,9 .…”

“…This could explain why such high numbers of ex vivo expanded MSCs are needed for transplantation since the potency of the population is reduced with each ex vivo cell division. Since the postthaw native cell recovery of cryopreserved minced tissue is approximately 15% 1,2,10 likely due to the lack of sufficient diffusion of cryoprotectant into a large, complex tissue, one viable clinical product from minced tissue is an ex vivo expanded cellular product. Due to the nature of the minced tissue product, cell-based quality determinations based on individual units are difficult to attain.…”

“…Another method employed by tissue banks to process UCT is to process the entire UCT to recover the heterogeneous native, primary cells that comprise the tissue 1 . The UCT can be used in its entirety or with the vessels dissected.…”

“…The advantage of this processing method is that it results in a native cellular product that can be verified for quality, with the qualified product ready for use immediately, if granted approval from regulatory agencies. Furthermore, the native stem cells that exist within this product represent the stem cells with the greatest potency 1,2,[7][8][9] . The disadvantage of this method is that it costs relatively more to process the entire tissue to recover the native cells, compared to simply mincing and cryopreserving the tissue segment.…”