Collection and Storage of Umbilical Cord Stem Cells for Treatment of Sickle Cell Disease

Umbilical cord blood is a source of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for transplantation or gene therapy. Our goal is to procure umbilical cord blood from newborns at risk for sickle cell disease, sickle cell trait, and related disorders as well as normal newborns and store clinical grade cord blood units (CBU) for future use in clinical transplantation or gene therapy. Cord blood units will be collected from 500 subjects until 50 CBU from newborns with homozygous sickle cell disease (HbSS) have been cryopreserved. The NIH Sickle Cell Cord Blood Program has contracted Duke University s Carolina Cord Blood Bank/Stem Cell Transplant Laboratory (CCBB/STCL)\*\^, a CAP and FACTaccredited and CLIA certified laboratory, to facilitate maternal screening, cord blood kit distribution or onsite collection, processing, and storage of cord blood for maternal subjects identified as being at risk of having an infant with sickle cell disease. Mothers between the ages of 18 and 45 years who meet specified medical history criteria will deliver at her preferred hospital using CCBB/STCL s directed donation kit program. The collected CBU and needed samples will be transported to the CCBB/STCL processing facility for processing and storage. Clinical grade frozen CBUs will be transferred to the NIH for future clinical transplantation (related allogeneic transplant) or gene therapy studies (autologous transplant) under an IRB approved protocol. \*Any future mention of CCBB/STCL is understood to be a contracted service for NIH Sickle Cell Cord Blood Program. \^CCBB/STCL has been contracted for a fee-for-service to collect and store cord blood units. CCBB/STCL will not be engaged in human subject research activities (e.g. recruitment, consenting, maintenance/ processing of data, data analysis, manuscript writing, access to personal identifiable information linked to data, and/or access to a key code, etc.).