Separation of adult bone marrow mononuclear cells using the automated closed separation system Sepax

Background The Dsseldorf-based cardiologist Professor Strauer was the first to present a therapeutic concept for the repair of acute infarcted myocardium in 2001: the autologous intracoronary transplantation of unfractionated human bone marrow (BM) mononuclear cells (MNC). The Division of Cardiology, Pneumology and Angiology, University of Duesseldorf Medical School, Duesseldorf, Germany, was also able to show the regenerative potential of BM stem cell transplantation in patients with chronic heart disease (CHD) and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). In the mean time, several clinical trials have been set up worldwide, predominantly by using MNC isolated manually from BM aspirates via density-gradient centrifugation; 374 patients have been treated here with unselected BM MNC since 2001. Altogether 217 BM aspirates have been processed manually. In order to maintain the high standards required for cellular therapeutics, the Sepax cell-separation system was implemented into routine BM processing in 2006. The closed Sepax system provides a reproducible MNC isolation method, and 157 BM samples have been processed with the Sepax device. The results of manual MNC isolation were compared with the Sepax-mediated MNC isolation. Methods The manual Ficoll (R) separation method was compared with the Sepax density gradient-based separation (DGBS) protocol using Ficoll (R) with the kit CS-900 and the Sepax (R) S-100 main processing unit from Biosafe. Results Nucleated cell and MNC recovery were significantly higher after Sepax processing (P<0.0001) whereas no significance was found for red blood cell depletion. Discussion The Sepax cell-separation system is a time-saving method providing clinical-grade MNC isolated automatically from human BM by Ficoll density centrifugation.