Precession-based control methodology for haematopoietic stem cells harvesting

The human placenta and umbilical cord blood (UCB) provide a rich source of highly-proliferative haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for many clinical uses with advantages over traditional sources like the bone marrow and periphery blood. However, the current constraint with this source of HSCs is the inadequate number of HSCs cells which can be harvested in a single collection using current approaches which render a large number of collections unusable on their own, even for paediatric patients. The large reservoir of useful HSCs within the placenta has to be discarded upon the delivery of the placenta out of the maternal body. The user-centric approach is adopted in this project to tackle the social and technical issues related to the harvesting of HSCs. On the social portion, an in-depth ethnographic study is conducted over 3 months in the delivery wards to understand the concerns of the users. The results will be useful to promote the collection of HSCs in the cord blood banks. In addition, a novel device (i.e. amenable to be readily deployable in the delivery wards) that could improve the harvest of stem cells will also be developed, taking into consideration the needs of the various stakeholders. Initial proof-of-concept results have provided good motivation to proceed with the full scale development of the proposed device.