Selection criteria may be adjusted at the request of the customer depending on the intended use of the product and the customer’s requirements, provided that subject safety requirements are met. At the customer’s request, subjects with a history of travel or medication ingestion that would preclude them from providing a blood product suitable for transfusion may provide whole blood for production of red blood cells for non-clinical and non-injectable uses.

We also offer qualification samples on potential subjects to allow the end-user to determine suitability for targeted materials. Specific subjects may be requested for product collection. Subjects may donate as often as once every eight weeks and up to six times in any 12-month period.

Subjects are usually prescreened prior to product collection for evidence of transmissible infectious diseases with the standard panel of tests used to screen blood products for transfusion acceptability. This panel of tests is usually repeated with each collected product.

Whole blood units are usually collected into a standard blood bag system used for collection of whole blood for transfusion and containing CPDA-1 or CP2D anticoagulant. Red blood cell units are produced using centrifugation without disrupting the closed system in which the whole blood was collected. Post-production filtration through a leukocyte-reduction filter results in a product with less than 5x10⁶ residual leukocytes in the final product. Non-leukocyte-reduced products are also available.

Depending on the intended use of the collected product, red blood cells may be produced from a whole blood unit collected into a bag system containing heparin sodium. Products collected in this manner cannot be used for clinical research.

Specific subjects may be selected from our database based on:

• Blood type
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Human Erythrocyte Antigen genotype

Optional pre-collection qualification screening is available:

• Cell counts
• Anti-HLA Class I or Class II antibodies screen
• Recent medication usage

Optional post-collection release screening is available:

• Hematocrit
• Weight and/or volume

Packaging and Shipment

In alignment with the intended use of the product and the customer’s requirements, red blood cell units can be packaged and shipped on the date of collection for overnight delivery.