Research Project 3: Development of a Microfluidic Device for DMSO Removal
Published on: Tuesday 22, December 2009BioCoR
The vast majority of umbilical cord blood (UCB) units are cryopreserved using a 10% DMSO solution. Despite its clinical use, DMSO is not approved for systemic administration and the infusion of cryopreserved cells containing DMSO into humans has been associated with various adverse events. Current methods of removing of DMSO are time consuming, labor intensive and result in cell losses of 25-30%.
The objective of this project is to develop a clinical-scale microfluidic device that removes DMSO from frozen-and-thawed UCB. The device would reduce both cell losses and processing time for DMSO removal from UCB (process a standard 30 ml unit of UCB in 15 minutes with high cell recovery and 95% DMSO removal).
Cryopreservation of cells requires the use of specialized solutions that must be introduced and removed. Therefore, the development of microfluidic devices to perform these tasks could improve biopsecimen quality by reducing time, cell losses and sample to sample variability.
