Method to determine an engrafting cell dose of hematopoietic stem cell transplant units

Patent Number: 6852534

At first glance this patent seems extremely simple and maybe even obvious. Essentially it teaches the use of counting of leukocytes from a hematopoietic stem cell graft so has to know how many cells to transplant for hematopoietic reconstitution.

The invention is however very important in areas like cord blood stem cell transplants where it is very difficult to actually quantify the number of white blood cells.

The importance of knowing the accurate level of nucleated cells is to ensure that enough actual hematopoietic stem cells are transplanted into the recipient. If not enough stem cells are given and the stem cells do not engraft, then the patient may succumb to bacterial or viral infections due to immune compromise.

View this patent on the USPTO website.