Why is DKMS keen for people from different parts of the world to sign up?

Tissue characteristics vary from person to person – but they are also different between ethnicities. So when it comes to finding a matching donor, a person’s ethnic background is important. Blood cancer, on the other hand, can happen to anyone. So we need as many people as possible with the widest possible variety of genetic characteristics to register in our database. A donor with the same ethnic background as a patient may be a better match than one who comes from an entirely different background.

If you register with DKMS as a potential blood stem cell donor, one of the questions we ask you will be about your etnic background. This information allows us to better organize our database. This could make it easier and faster for doctors to search for a matching donor for their patient.