Abstract: A container for housing body fluids, preferably blood in its component form. The container comprises a body defined by flexible walls having an interior for housing the body fluid. Additionally, a means for allowing selective fluid flow allows the blood components to be expressed from one chamber of the container into another to separate and separately house the blood components. The present invention also provides a method for separating blood into its components and individually storing same.

Abstract: Systems and methods of collecting blood cells use a first container connected to at least three transfer containers. A filtration system is provided with one transfer container, which ultimately serves as the storage container for red blood cells free of white blood cells. The two other transfer containers are connected to each other, one of which is empty and one of which contains and additive solution for storage of red blood cells. The empty transfer container is used for storage of platelet concentrate, while the container that originally contained the additive solution is ultimately used to store the platelet-poor plasma component. A portion of the additive solution may be separately passed through the filtration system after filtration of the red cells to flush additional red blood cells from the filtration device.