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Heroic volunteer couriers have been battling snow and ice in a race against time to deliver potentially lifesaving stem cells to blood cancer patients, according to blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan.

Anthony Nolan matches individuals willing to donate their stem cells to patients with blood cancer or blood disorders who desperately need lifesaving transplants. The charity enlists the help of over 50 volunteers, who travel the UK and all over the world to collect stem cells from donors and deliver them to patients safely and promptly.

Players at Inverness Caledonian Thistle joined the Anthony Nolan stem cell donor register at Fort George this week, and encouraged other young men to do the same.

Anthony Nolan need more young men to sign up. They produce more stem cells than women and are six times more likely to donate, but make up just 17% of our register. We also need more donors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds as we often struggle to find matches for people in these groups.

A new study suggests that after HLA matching, the age of a stem cell donor is the most important characteristic influencing patient survival following a stem cell transplant, and that younger donors are associated with better survival rates for patients.

Previous studies have suggested that donor characteristics including sex, ethnicity, blood type and previous pregnancies could all affect patient survival, making it difficult for transplant clinicians to rank donors where a patient has multiple HLA-matched donors.  

Responding to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blood Cancer’s report ‘The ‘Hidden’ Cancer: The need to improve blood cancer care’, published today, Anthony Nolan’s Policy and Public Affairs Manager Amelia Chong comments:

A schoolgirl has become the 10,000th lifesaver recruited by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) for Anthony Nolan.

Clydebank High School’s 16-year-old Shelley McKay was proud to help the Service achieve the landmark number of donors on Tuesday, December 5. And the outstanding donor tally has so far resulted in 27 lives being saved.

Retired Area Manager Ally Boyle sparked the award-winning partnership between SFRS and the charity. He said: “When I was diagnosed with a blood cancer I was absolutely devastated.

Anthony Nolan has announced a collaboration with biotech firm Plasticell to make stem cell transplants from umbilical cords more effective.

Cord blood is used in over 110 UK transplants per year, and has a number of advantages over transplants from an unrelated adult donor. Because it is collected and banked, it is available immediately for patients in urgent need of a transplant. The stem cells in cord blood are less mature and can adapt to suit a wider range of tissue types, so can be a lifeline for people with unusual tissue types and no match on the donor register.

TV presenter Joe Crowley will host this year’s Anthony Nolan Supporter Awards on Tuesday 28 November. The annual awards celebrate, recognise and thank the outstanding supporters who keep the pioneering blood cancer charity moving forward.

Fifteen awards will be presented at the event, which takes place at the House of Commons in categories including Patient Champion of the Year, Donor Champion of the Year, John Petchey Young Hero.

Anthony Nolan has partnered with Leuka, NHS Blood and Transplant and the University of Birmingham to deliver the UK’s first large-scale clinical trials programme, to save and improve the lives of children and adults who receive stem cell transplants.

A thirteen-year-old from Edinburgh has met the stranger who donated bone marrow – two years after battling back to health after a stem cell transplant. 

Rory was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, a rare form of blood cancer, in 2014. Rory’s best chance of a cure was a bone marrow transplant which involved eradicating his diseased cells with chemotherapy and replacing them with cells from a stranger.