Cord blood is collected at each one of our collection sites by trained National Cord Blood Program staff.

Minutes after a child’s birth and after the umbilical cord is cut, the placenta and its attached portion of the cord (the afterbirth) are delivered. The New York Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program staff take the placenta to an adjacent laboratory where they collect the cord blood into a sterile plastic bag, like those used for blood transfusion. Because we collect cord blood from the delivered placenta, there is no risk to mother or child. An NCBP nurse then explains all aspects of the Program to the mother and requests her consent to donate the cord blood, as required by the NCBP FDA IND exemption and research protocol. Donation of blood from a single placenta becomes a single cord unit. [See more details in Cord Blood Collections and in Cord Blood Q&A.]

Processing cord blood.

Once each day, cord blood units are transferred to the NCBP laboratories where several small samples are removed for typing and testing and the unit is processed for freezing and storage.

We remove excess red blood cells and plasma to reduce the volume of each cord blood unit to 20 ml (equal to about 4 teaspoons). What remains contains nearly all of the nucleated blood cells present in the collection, including the hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells. We combine these cells with a preservative (DMSO) that protects the cells during freezing. The "cryoprotected" cells are transferred to a specially-designed freezer bag and sealed into an individual quarantine overwrap.

Cord blood units are frozen and stored at -196°C until needed.

The cord blood unit is frozen and stored in liquid-nitrogen freezers designed especially for cord blood units. The BioArchive™ (ThermoGenesis) is a robotic freezer that controls and monitors the rate of freezing, stores the unit in liquid nitrogen and provides quick access to stored units whenever needed, all under computer control.

When a transplant center requests a matched cord blood unit for a patient, the available inventory of cord blood units is "searched" for matches to the patient. The best unit (or units) can be selected, confirmed and delivered rapidly upon request.

Transplant teams submit "Search Requests" to the NYBC's National Cord Blood Program on behalf of their patients to see if we have a suitable cord blood unit in the inventory. When a matched unit is found and the patient and the transplant physicians decide to proceed to transplant and enter the clinical research study, NCBP confirms the HLA typing of both the cord blood unit and the patient (at no extra charge). Confirmatory typing of the cord blood is performed on a sample of the unit’s contents using sealed tubing integral to the freezing bag. This confirmation makes sure no mistakes were made in labeling or in HLA typing. When everything is determined to be correct and the unit is ordered for the patient, it is shipped in a liquid-nitrogen-cooled container (DryShipper). The Transplant Center receives the unit before the patient begins the preparatory treatment for the transplant. Thus, the Center can make sure that the correct unit arrived in good condition without putting the patient at any risk.