The goal of umbilical cord blood processing is to prepare the transplant, which can be stored for many decades. Nowadays, many methods are used for the transplant preparation. The common feature of all methods is the freezing (dry preservation) of the transplant. Currently, the transplant is frozen in a computer controlled cryogenic freezer. This is due to the fact that the way of decreasing the cell’s temperature markedly affects their survival after the unfreezing.

          The individual methods differ mainly in preparing the umbilical cord blood for dry preservation. The main objective of the majority of these methods is to isolate only the stem cells, by which the final volume of the material assigned for the storage is noticeably reduced and thereby the costs of the company are reduced, too. Based on scientific publication and our own testing of all existing methods we consider methods with volume reduction as unsuitable. Actually, all of them lead not only to the reduction of the volume, but to reduction of the number of stem cells as well. Several of them even don’t totally exclude some slightly examined stem cells, which can be very important for utilisation in future. Currently, transplantologists require the maximum possible number of haematopoietic stem cells for the transplantation, as this number influences the prognosis (the more cells, the greater is the chance for success of the transplant). Most likely, it will be changed in the near future, but the child could need the transplant very soon, thus we prefer methods that preserve all cells of the umbilical cord blood. The method we currently employ is utilised also by the biggest Registry of donated transplants from the umbilical cord blood all over the world, in New York.

          Besides preserving the maximal amount of the umbilical cord blood it is important to preserve the sterility of the transplant. The most suitable way of preserving the sterility of the umbilical cord blood is to process the umbilical cord blood in a closed system. It means, during the processing the umbilical cord blood does not come into contact with the external environment. Next it is important to assure the maximal level of cleanliness in the laboratory. This is possible only when the laboratory is equipped with an overpressure filtering system, which must be regularly checked. The single manipulation must be carried out in a sterile box. It is a fact that, during our practice abroad, we did not always meet such precautions.

          One very important factor, which affects the successfulness of transplant processing, is lowering the occurrence of human mistakes and preventing the replacement of the samples. Here it is important that the work teams do not process several samples at once, that the labelling of transplants and samples is definite and irreplaceable (suitable mathematical procedures and the system of the bar codes are applied). Here, let us say that the standard system of outgoing quality control within the proper serial production practice is not adequate. Although the system detects damage of the transplant, it doesn’t prevent from it. As the transplant, unlike the majority of products, is unique and irreplaceable, it is desirable that the system of quality control runs in real time, during the umbilical cord blood processing, and prevents the devaluation of transplant by mistake detection, prior to having the negative consequences on the transplant. In practice it means that it is not suitable to process the transplant by one employee, but by a team - where the individual employees check mutually their activities. Although the system is more expensive, it is very efficient and minimises the risk of damage or devaluation of the umbilical cord blood.