The search - All in for the perfect match

A blood cancer diagnosis is a shock and often marks the start of a race against time. For many patients, their only chance of survival is to find a matching blood stem cell donor, as fast as possible.

We devote our hearts and minds to the constant development of innovative ideas to make the search for a donor, and all the other processes around a blood stem cell donation, even faster and more effective.

We ask our donors to support us for a range of initiatives, such as:

• Updating their donor profiles: we ask selected donor groups for a new sample to be typed again and to fill in a health questionnaire.
• Detailed typing for a patient request: this involves an even more detailed comparison between a donor’s typing profile and that of a specific patient.
• Donors with common HLA markers: we ask these donors to fill out a health questionnaire every two years and to confirm their willingness to donate in the event that they are to come up as a match. This means that if they do come up as a match for a patient, we can organise the donation even faster.
• The Ancestry Initiative: we ask DKMS donors with rare typing profiles for their support – because the tissue characteristics of their relatives are often equally rare.