In 2008, the UK Secretary of State for Health officially opened the state of the art Anthony Nolan Cell Therapy Centre. Located in the grounds of Nottingham Trent University, it was managed with the help of the James Tudor Foundation and the East Midlands Development Agency. We established this facility to process and store cord blood for national and international clinical transplantation centres, in order to supplement our existing cellular therapy services. The centre will also carry out world class research and supply cord blood to other approved research programmes throughout Europe.
After willing mothers give their consent to donate, our collection maternity wards then courier collected cords to Nottingham under controlled conditions. The Cell Therapy Centre is the processing and storing facility of the public Anthony Nolan Cord Blood Bank programme. It has been licensed with the Human Tissue Authority since September 2008. All work is done within a quality system, according to standard operating procedures. Also, processing is done in a clean room under sterile conditions in order to protect cord blood units from external risks. This helps ensure we produce products of the highest safety and quality, while meeting national and European regulations for tissue establishments. Cord blood units are processed in an automated and closed system before being stored. A biobanking tracking system allows the traceability and retrieval of all samples in the inventory. We can even obtain the individual cords’ thermal histories using the latest generation of freezing tanks. While being stored, the cord blood units remain in our cryogenic area at temperatures below -190°C. They’re available for transplantation to any patient in need in the world. When required, we transport our clinical products to service users in cryoshippers, utilising our specialist distribution/courier partner. And our product labeling system conforms to the internationally accepted ISBT 128 bar code system.
We also store cord blood of non-clinical standard which we distribute as research units. We hope these can be used by academics and scientists to improve cord blood banking strategies and develop new lifesaving therapies.
To provide evidence of stem cell functionality, cord blood units are extensively tested. In addition, an inventory of clinical and research units has been generated dependent on quality thresholds. The final product is qualified using validated assays. This includes sterility, viability, functionality and total number of cell assays, virology and HLA (tissue typing) testing. Cords of clinical quality have their details recorded on the Anthony Nolan database. They are searched automatically when a national or international transplant team use our registry services.
Our Cell Therapy Centre (Cord Bank) is the first to combine cord blood storage with a research institute aimed at developing new techniques to use them. A total of 50,000 donations are expected by 2013. Of this 20,000 will be suitable for transplantation, with the remainder being used in cord blood research.
- If you are a healthcare professional wishing to source umbilical cord blood for allogeneic stem cell transplantation, please contact our
Operations Department.
Any suitable Anthony Nolan banked cord blood will be listed on search reports provided. We will continue to import cord blood from other established international cord blood banks as required.
- If you are from an (European based) academic research department/university, the NHS, private/public healthcare providing organisation, pharmaceutical company, biotechnology company, government agency or another healthcare charity, and are interested in sourcing cord bloods for research, please contact us. The Anthony Nolan Cell Therapy Centre facility manager will send you an application pack. Email susana.gomez@anthonynolan.org or call +44 (0)115 848 8093.
We have established the UK s first integral national Cord Blood Programme consisting of both a cord blood bank and a research institute. It will complement our donor register.
“This could become the leading cord blood programme in the world. Combining cord blood and research with donor registers, it is a unique model.”
Professor Alejandro Madrigal
Director of Research, Anthony Nolan