Product Safety and Blood Center Operations

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Product Safety and Blood Center Operations

The Transfusion Innovation Department works in collaboration with project teams at national headquarters to test and evaluate new technologies and processes being considered for use by ARC Biomedical Services (ARCBS) for the collection, processing and testing of blood and blood components. Typical projects include:

A new collection set recently assessed for the collection and manufacture of leukoreduced blood, now being used by ARCBS.
A new instrument to count residual levels of white blood cells in leukoreduced blood components recently implemented by ARCBS.
A new pathogen reduction technology for platelets, now being used by ARCBS

Pampee Young, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Officer, Biomedical Sciences - Adjunct Professor, Vanderbilt Medical Center

Dr. Bethany Brown, PhD, MSCS
Senior Director, Transfusion Innovation, Principal Investigator

Michelle Dabay

Project Manager II

Product Safety

The Transfusion Innovation Department collaborates within Red Cross and with industrial partners to evaluate the bacterial safety of blood components. Recent projects include:

The estimation of bacterial risk as a function of time between collection and pathogen reduction.
Wagner SJ, Benjamin RJ, Hapip CA, Kaeller NS, Turgeon AM, Skripchenko A, Stasinopoulos A. Investigation of bacterial inactivation in apheresis platelets within 24 or 30 hours between inoculation and inactivation. Vox Sang 2016;111:226-34.
Comparison of bacterial septic risk in two apheresis collection devices.
Eder AF, Dy BA, DeMerse B, Wagner SJ, Stramer SL, O’Neil EM, Herron RM. Apheresis technology correlates with bacterial contamination of platelets and reported septic transfusion reactions. Transfusion 2017;57:2969-76.
The evaluation of bacterial risk in platelets suspended in platelet additive solution or plasma
Wagner S, Hapip A, Abel LA. Comparison of bacterial growth kinetics in platelets suspended in plasma and platelet additive solution. Transfusion 2018;58S2:207A.