Recovery and Post-Thaw Assessment of Human Umbilical Cord Blood Cryopreserved as Quality Control Segments and Bulk...

Quality control (QC) segments conjoined to a bulk sample container are used to evaluate the viability and quality of cryopreserved umbilical cord blood (UCB). Such QC segments are typically attached lengths of sealed tubing that are cooled concurrently with the bulk sample, both containing material from the same donor. QC segments are thawed independently of the bulk sample to assess the quality of the cryopreserved product. In current practice, there is typically post-thaw variation between the QC segment and the bulk sample which if suggestive of inadequate performance, could lead to material being needlessly discarded. In this study, these performance differences were quantified. Two cooling protocols in common use, 1 with and 1 without a "plunge" step to induce ice nucleation, gave equivalent results that maintained the QC segment versus bulk sample differences. Ice nucleated at significantly lower temperatures in the QC segments compared with the bulk samples, a consequence of their lower volume, thereby enhancing damaging osmotic stress. A reduction in total viable cells of approximately 10% was recorded in the QC segments compared with comparable bulk samples. It has been shown that CD45⁺ cells are more adversely impacted by this lower ice nucleation temperature than CD34⁺ cells, which can result in altered composition of the post-thaw cell population.