Part of a projects series conducted in the Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization with the primary goal of introducing blood transfusion waste products as a sustainable and economic source of bio-molecules and cells.

This is particularly important in under-developed countries where fundings and resources are limited.

We have investigated if the used leukocyte reduction filters, a by-product in the blood transfusion practice that currently is considered wastes, can be utilized as a source of NK cells. Our results shows that the used leukocyte reduction filters can be considered as an economic, easy to obtain, and robust source of abundant research-grade NK cells.

Every major leukocyte population was abundant in the samples extracted from the used leukocyte reduction filters. The NK cells extracted from leukocyte reduction filters with our proposed workflow did not show any statistically meaningful differences from peripheral blood samples in terms of sub-populational composition, viability, degranulation potency, and cytotoxic capacity.

Please see our publication for more detail:

Moosa Rezwani, Abdulbaset Mazarzaei, Zahra Abbasi-Malati, Ali Akbar Pourfathollah, Leukocyte-Reduction Filters as Reliable and Economic Source of Natural Killer Cells‎. Iranian Journal of Immunology, 2022 (Accpeted)