Well, thought I would share a really neat and interesting aspect of my life apart from being a fish hobbyist and animal enthusiast. I know most people wouldn't want to talk about their jobs on this forum, but I guess i can say I am proud of what I do. I am a Medical Technologist/Production technician for a Cord Blood Bank, and basically what I do is harvest mature stem cells from umbilical cord blood. I know what some people are thinking. Stem cells??? Oh god! I hear it a lot. The difference between what I am doing vs. embryo stem cell research, is the samples we work with are collected from the umbilical cord after a baby is born and donated to us for further testing and possible donor purposes.
I know this may sound boring to some, but these little 25-30ml bags of cells are curing diseases of all types and leaving people, who were once sick, a healthy new outlook on life. All because a baby was born. I always thought it was neat how a product that would once become medical waste is being used for many purposes, whether it be treatment for the incurable, or a cure for something deadly.
Here is a typical day.
We receive the unit and transfer it to a solution meant to draw down red cells, leaving the plasma with the stems cells sitting on top. We put them on a plasma expressor for 30 minutes while the red cells settle down. After 30 minutes, this is what it looks like:
We then drain off the cell containing plasma and spin both bags down:
After spin
We then drain of the clear plasma so that we only have the cells at the bottom of the bag. These are our stem cells
We use a large syringe to get as many of these cells out of the bag as we can. It can take a minutes at times as these bags are not people friendly.
After we have pulled the product out of the back, we transfer it to much smaller bag, and add a solution to keep the cells from dying when we freeze them in liquid nitrogen.
Once this is done, we heat seal the lines to create segments for further testing in the future
and we freeze them at a controlled rate.
and when the controlled freezing is done, they are stored at -190F in large tanks.
Like I said, I know this was probably boring for a lot of people, but I think its a fascinating procedure, and I just wanted to share it
I know this may sound boring to some, but these little 25-30ml bags of cells are curing diseases of all types and leaving people, who were once sick, a healthy new outlook on life. All because a baby was born. I always thought it was neat how a product that would once become medical waste is being used for many purposes, whether it be treatment for the incurable, or a cure for something deadly.
Here is a typical day.
We receive the unit and transfer it to a solution meant to draw down red cells, leaving the plasma with the stems cells sitting on top. We put them on a plasma expressor for 30 minutes while the red cells settle down. After 30 minutes, this is what it looks like:
We then drain off the cell containing plasma and spin both bags down:
After spin
We then drain of the clear plasma so that we only have the cells at the bottom of the bag. These are our stem cells
We use a large syringe to get as many of these cells out of the bag as we can. It can take a minutes at times as these bags are not people friendly.
After we have pulled the product out of the back, we transfer it to much smaller bag, and add a solution to keep the cells from dying when we freeze them in liquid nitrogen.
Once this is done, we heat seal the lines to create segments for further testing in the future
and we freeze them at a controlled rate.
and when the controlled freezing is done, they are stored at -190F in large tanks.
Like I said, I know this was probably boring for a lot of people, but I think its a fascinating procedure, and I just wanted to share it
