Donating for Medical Research and Treatments

Donors who are willing to donate their cells to medical research will need to be enrolled on to the Medical Research Donor Panel. To be enrolled you will need complete a pre-screening questionnaire. The questionnaire covers your general health as well as your availability and preferences for the use of your cells.

Once you have completed this and it’s been cleared, you will be enrolled on to the Medical Research Donor Panel.

Once you are on Medical Research Donor Panel, you can expect to hear from Anthony Nolan every time a medical researcher requests a donation for their project. We will contact you via email with the date, time, type of donation, and a bit of background on the research project to see if you are available and interested to donate. It's your choice if you want to donate to the request. Please feel free to reach out to the Anthony Nolan Coordinators if you have any questions about the request.

For each request we like to find two donors: a primary and a secondary - just in case one donor can't donate for any reason.

If you are available and interested, let the Anthony Nolan Coordinators know by completing the survey linked in the invitation email. They will tell you if you are the primary donor or the secondary donor, and walk you through the next steps in the donation process.

Before you go on to donate, your Anthony Nolan Coordinator will arrange a medical examination at a specialist hospital. The medical is a series of checks and tests to ensure you are able to donate, you can read about what this involves here.

If you have already had a medical, you may need to repeat some tests to ensure you are still fit to donate. Your Anthony Nolan Coordinator will arrange this with you.

If the primary donor is cleared they will go on to donate for the request. The secondary donor remains on the Medical Research Donor Panel and will be asked first as a priority for any future donation requests.

But if the primary donor is not cleared, the secondary donor will go forward for the donation instead. Your Anthony Nolan Coordinator will lead you through each and every step up until your donation.

Please ask if you would like to find out more about the medical research project you’re involved in. We will try our best to give you as much information as we can; however it is often not possible for us to provide information about the outcomes of research. This can be for confidentiality reasons, or simply because research takes many years to be published and shared with the public.

Following our social media channels is a great way of staying up-to-date with the latest research advances and what they mean for patients.

Of course! You will not be taken off the register and will still be available to be selected as a match for a transplant patient. If you are chosen as a preferred donor for a transplant patient, we can cancel your donation for medical research at any time as the donation to a transplant patient takes priority.

You can also donate more than once, so taking part in a medical research project will not stop you from being chosen as a matching transplant donor in the future. People who donate via PBSC or bone marrow can do so for a maximum of two transplant patients or four times in total. Donating for medical research will count as one transplant patient.

You will not receive any payment for donating your cells for medical research, as this is illegal in the UK and also comes with ethical and welfare risks (read more here). However, any expenses you incur at all for the donation - like travel, accommodation or loss of earnings - will be fully reimbursed.

Anthony Nolan does not conduct animal research in our laboratories. However occasionally, when pioneering medical research requires it and there is no alternative available, we work with other organisations where animal research is used to develop and improve treatments.

Cancer survival rates have doubled over the past 40 years. This achievement would not have been possible without animal research, which has resulted in the discovery, development and testing of lifesaving treatments. As a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) we support the principle of using animals in research when it is necessary to advance understanding of health and disease and to develop new treatments.

In the UK, there are very strict regulations governing the use of animals in research to ensure that animals are treated ethically and that any pain or distress is minimised. The use of animals in scientific procedures within the UK is regulated by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA), administered and enforced by the Home Office’s Animals in Science Regulation Unit. We ensure that organisations we work with have a clear and transparent policy around animal research and that they conform to the 3Rs – Replace, Refine, Reduce – which help guide researchers to only use animals when absolutely necessary.

During the consent process, you will have the chance to opt out of donating for research involving animals. This limits the pool of projects for which you may be invited to donate.

We will never share your name, address or contact details with the researchers. They may ask for your age and gender, and sometimes your tissue type, health status, ethnicity, and/or infectious disease profile, but this will be anonymised .

Anthony Nolan receives payment for the service it delivers providing donated cells to academic researchers and companies developing new treatments to help patients. Anthony Nolan is a non-profit organisation. This vital income is reinvested into delivering on Anthony Nolan’s charitable aims – saving and improving even more lives, supporting the patient of today through patient information and services, and supporting the patient of the future through delivering and supporting ground-breaking medical research. Anthony Nolan does not charge its own researchers for this service.