Our Impact Report 2020/21

We’ll keep working, together.

Every year 2,200 people with blood cancer and blood disorders in the UK start their urgent search for a matching donor to give them a second chance of life.

Your support means we can work tirelessly to improve the lives of everyone who needs a stem cell transplant - to find their matching donor, improve their survival chances and support them every step of the way.

We’re proud of what we have achieved so far, but we know we can always do more. This year has been another difficult year, but by working together, we’ve overcome some big challenges to deliver for our patients.

In this Impact Report you’ll find our challenges and successes of 2020/21, including what we’ve learnt along the way and, crucially, where we need your help to make change happen. You can also see how we’re delivering on our ambitious strategy, ‘Together, We Can Save Lives’, launched in 2019.

Our highlights

An introduction from our Chief Executive, Henny Braund MBE

Our main challenges

• We still struggle to find the best possible match for everyone – particularly people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Increasing recruitment of young, male, and ethnically diverse donors is essential.
• Just 50% of adult patients survive the first five years after a transplant, so we’ve made it a priority to fund and conduct research which will improve transplant outcomes.
• Our specialised personal support and wider campaigning works to improve access to the physical and psychological support patients and families desperately need.

By harnessing our position as a donor register, research pioneer, and patient support provider, together we can bring about real, lasting change for patients.

Evolving through the pandemic

Our patients come first. The pandemic affected nearly every aspect of our work and our ability to save lives. While our initial response was to maintain our core services, this year we’ve evolved in response to the challenges we’ve faced:  

• We introduced a cryopreservation service to freeze and preserve the viability of the donated stem cells for domestic and international use.  
• We set up an emergency 24 hour ‘handover hub’ at Heathrow Airport to allow international couriers to handover or collect stem cells for the final lifesaving leg.
• We invested heavily in digital recruitment platforms to keep growing the stem cell register, signing up 98% of donors online this year.
• We provided additional lab services and lent genetic sequencing equipment to one of the UK’s Covid-19 testing labs to support the clinical community.
• We got creative with fundraising. Our committed supporters took on challenge after challenge through lockdowns and our Emergency Coronavirus Appeal raised £710,000.

How we funded our work

Making lifesaving matches happen

Making sure every patient is able to receive the right treatment is a complex issue. When it comes to finding the best possible stem cell match for patients, there are still great health inequalities.

• We launched our Youth Ambassador Programme in partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh Award, giving people aged 16-18 a volunteering opportunity that focuses on donor recruitment and fundraising. Since September 2020, more than 70 ambassadors have started the programme.  
• Marrow, Anthony Nolan’s network of student groups across the country, continue to play a vital role in raising awareness in their universities. Even through successive lockdowns, 1,542 potential donors joined the register through 50 active Marrow groups.   
• We’ve taken an active role within the World Marrow Donor Association to advocate for registers worldwide, including stewardship of the ‘Search, Match and Connect’ programme, a fast preliminary search facility to find the best-matched donor or cord blood unit worldwide.

Pioneering lifesaving research

Anthony Nolan is saving lives right now. But having more people on the stem cell register isn’t the whole story – how do we ensure patients have the best possible chance of receiving a successful transplant so they can live and live well after treatment?

We know that research doesn’t happen overnight. But, we also know it can have the biggest impact on patient survival and wellbeing in the future.

Finding the perfect match  

Our Patient/Donor project, which has been running for over 20 years, is analysing the progress of over 2,500 transplants on genetic and cellular levels to better understand which donor characteristics influence patient outcomes. We continually use this ongoing research to inform and update key work around donor selection and recruitment.  

Already, this project has highlighted the importance of younger donor age and a matching CMV (cytomegalovirus) status for patients. The number of Anthony Nolan donors under 30 selected for transplant has increased from 69% in 2016 to 82% in 2021. This means more patients are getting the best possible match and the best possible chance of life after treatment.

Developing new therapies 

We’re providing donated stem cells and other blood products from our cohort of volunteer research donors, like Phil below, to scientists around the world. These are being used in the research and development of innovative new treatments for patients with a range of conditions. Any funds raised through our service are being reinvested to further our charity’s work. 

Being there for patients, now and always

We passionately believe that it’s not enough to save a life – it’s vital patients live the best possible quality of life, with access to the physical and psychological support they need.

• Our eight Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) and three Clinical Psychologists have continued to help patients during their transplant journey, providing consistent, holistic support and information to ensure patients and families get the right support at the right time. 
• We launched a new programme of Anthony Nolan adopted NHS posts to complement our existing CNS funded posts. This has enabled us to better understand patient need and empower more healthcare professionals to provide necessary care and support to stem cell transplant patients. 
• We used lessons learned from the pandemic to ensure patients get the care and support they need post-transplant. We joined with other medical research charities to highlight the importance of our work and ask the government for investment in the face of huge funding cuts due to the pandemic. 

The impact a nurse has on recovery can be life changing...

On the horizon

Our enduring vision 

As an organisation, we have learnt a huge amount about ourselves over the last year – such as our ways of working, our relationships with supporters and the lifesaving value we provide to our patients. Having shown great resilience throughout the pandemic, we’re ready to carry these learnings forward to maximise our impact. 

As always, our vision will guide and underpin everything we do as we work to save and improve the lives of everyone who needs a stem cell transplant, providing them with the best possible treatment and care.

Our key priorities for next year  

• Continuing to expand and enrich our stem cell register, increasing the information we gather from new donors by collecting their CMV status which is increasingly important in finding the best possible match for patients. 
• We’ll be driving forward our research to understand the range of factors that influence the success of a transplant for patients.  
• Continuing to provide patients, families and carers with the support and information they need through our patient services while amplifying their voices to influence changes to policy and practice. 

We don’t know what’s around the corner, but one thing we do know is this – we will not stop. We will keep working, and will deliver.  

See more of our 2021-2022 work in our Annual Report. 

Without you, there really is no cure

Everything in this report is only possible thanks to our incredible supporters – from the committed fundraisers and corporate partners, to dedicated researchers and unstoppable volunteers. Together, we will make sure that more people with blood cancer and blood disorders will not only survive, but thrive.