Maria S. Albano

Impact of delayed umbilical cord clamping on public cord blood donations: can we help future patients and benefit infant donors?

Cord blood (CB) is a widely accepted stem cell source and its clinical utilization depends, to a great extent, on its cell content. Birth‐to‐clamping (BTC) time of umbilical cord determines placental transfusion to the newborn, and the remaining blood that can be collected and banked. The 2017 Committee Opinion of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends a delay of “at least 30‐60 seconds” before clamping the cord for all newborns to ensure adequate iron stores. The impact of delayed cord clamping (DCC) on public CB banking can be substantial.

Extracellular DNA in cord blood plasma and applications in cord blood banking for sample identification

BACKGROUND: Human cord blood (CB) units donated for transplantation require testing for various markers in blood and plasma aliquots. Although the identity link between the CB unit and the labeled aliquots with the same identifiers can be confirmed by HLA‐DNA assays, these methods have not been used for CB plasma. We have previously reported that viral DNA sequences are present in the CB plasma of carrier babies and now hypothesize that human genomic DNA may also be present in CB plasma.