[Flow cytometry quality control in stem cell separation]

Peripheral blood-derived haematopoietic stem cells (PBSC) are used as an alternative to bone marrow stem cells for autologous transplantation. One of the most important prerequisites for successful PBSC separation is the precise determination of the optimal separation days. As we previously demonstrated that neither PLT counts nor WBC counts in the peripheral blood (PB) are of predictive value for the amount of colony-forming cells (CFC) in the patients' PB, we started a daily monitoring of CD-34-positive cells to determine the beginning of the separation series. In addition to routine cell counts and CFU testing we assessed the number of CD 34+ in the PBSC concentrates to ascertain the number of separations needed for each patient. Due to the strong correlation of CD 34+ cells to CFC it is possible to predict the number of CFC collected within 2 h after finishing the PBSC separation and to calculate the efficiency of the separation for quality control.