A novel, bedside technique to rapidly identify umbilical cord blood units with high total nucleated cell numbers

BACKGROUND With increasing demand for umbilical cord blood units (CBUs) with total nucleated cell (TNC) counts of more than 150 × 10(7) , preshipping assessment is mandatory. Umbilical cord blood processing requires aseptic techniques and laboratories with specific air quality and cleanliness. Our aim was to establish a fast and efficient method for determining TNC counts at the obstetric ward without exposing the CBU to the environment. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS Data from a total of 151 cord blood donations at a single procurement site were included in this prospective study. We measured TNC counts in cord blood aliquots taken from the umbilical cord (TNCCord ), from placenta (TNCPlac ), and from a tubing segment of the sterile collection system (TNCTS ). TNC counts were compared to reference TNC counts in the CBU which were ascertained at the cord blood bank (TNCCBU ). RESULTS TNCTS counts (173 ± 33 × 10(7) cells; calculated for 1 unit) correlated fully with the TNCCBU reference counts (166 ± 33 × 10(7) cells, Pearson's r = 0.97, p < 0.0001). In contrast, TNCCord and TNCPlac counts were more disparate from the reference (r = 0.92 and r = 0.87, respectively). CONCLUSIONS A novel method of measuring TNC counts in tubing segments from the sterile cord blood collection system allows rapid and correct identification of CBUs with high cell numbers at the obstetric ward without exposing cells to the environment. This approach may contribute to cost efficacy as only CBUs with satisfactory TNC counts need to be shipped to the cord blood bank.

Estimating market access in non-GPA countries: A suggested methodology

The WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) has data reporting obligations for all its Contracting Parties. Submitting such data promotes transparency in public procurement and also signals tendencies towards discrimination. However, most developing countries, especially emerging economies, are non-members of the GPA and therefore have no comparable data reporting obligations. In most cases, this has led to an absence of any reliable data on these countries’ public purchases, which poses a serious challenge in international negotiations on the subject and in examining the impact of protectionist measures in these countries’ public markets. In this short paper, we attempt to overcome these data challenges by developing a methodology to estimate the size of procurement markets in non-GPA countries as well as foreign market access therein. We also show the results from this methodology for estimating the EU’s access in select emerging economies’ public markets.