Immunomagnetic separation using anti-CD34 monoclonal antibodies and paramagnetic microspheres has been used to enrich hematopoietic stem cells from human bone marrow, whole cord blood, or mobilized peripheral blood mononuclear cell collections. This method has been reported to achieve high separation purity of CD34+ cells in small scale experiments with fresh material. The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of the CD34+ cell selection technique, when thawed bone marrow or fresh peripheral blood mononuclear cells were enriched. Starting with thawed bone marrow containing 2.9% CD34+ cells the final product purity was 67.7% with a 6% CD34+ cell yield (enrichment factor 25.7), and a 85-fold CFU-GM enrichment. Using fresh mobilized peripheral blood mononuclear cells the released cells contained 77.6% CD34+ cells with a 47% yield (enrichment 86.5-fold), and a 46-fold CFU-GM enrichment. These results indicate that CD34+ cells can be selected from cryopreserved bone marrow using immunomagnetic procedures. However, fresh leukapheresis products seem to be a much better material for a positive immunomagnetic stem cell selection technique in terms of purity, yield and enrichment.

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