A new, interactive, educational resource supported by Canadian Blood Services’ BloodTechNet Award Program provides learners with a deeper understanding of the processes behind Canada’s Lifeline. Learn more about how the Tour came together in this blog.

Curious about the latest progress in research and education at Canadian Blood Services? Our Annual Impact Report 2023–2024 (now available on blood.ca) pulls together the latest case studies and spotlights on research and education initiatives from our innovation and portfolio management team. Learn more and access the report from this post!

Thanks to CIHR-funding, national collaboration and a lot of perseverance, a team of researchers is embarking on a journey to provide evidence on an unanswered question about blood transfusion. Learn more about the work behind the new, SexMatters clinical trial on sex-matched versus mismatched red blood cell transfusions in this blog.

Canadian Blood Services’ senior scientist, Dr. Donald R. Branch and his lab have recently contributed to the discovery of new information about the regulation of neutrophils – a type of immune cell in blood that fights infections. These results have been published in the high-impact scientific journal, Nature, and add to our understanding of inflammation.

Since 2018, Canadian Blood Services has supported the development of evidence-based guidelines on red blood cell transfusion in patients with hemoglobinopathies through its work with the International Collaboration for Transfusion Medicine Guidelines (ICTMG). Hemoglobinopathies include sickle cell disease, thalassemia and other conditions that affect the structure, chemistry, or production of red blood cells. This blog describes recent efforts to update the ICTMG’s hemoglobinopathies guideline.

The 2024 Canadian Blood Services’ Lay Science Writing Competition is open for submissions from research trainees in Canadian Blood Services’ research network until Friday, June 14, 2024. The theme this year is: “Connecting science with society”. Additional competition details available in this post!

In this blog, Dr. Brodie Nolan describes how Canadian Blood Services’ Blood Efficiency Accelerator Award Program (BEAP) is supporting the development of national best practices and a new registry for lifesaving transfusions that occur outside of hospitals.

or this blog, we invited Heather Sampson, the Chair of Canadian Blood Services’ Research Ethics Board, to reflect on her experience with research ethics and what she looks forward to in this role.

Read about the annual Research Day event held at the Centre for Blood Research (CBR) in this blog post written by CBR summer student alumni.

Dr. Sheila O’Brien, Canadian Blood Services’ associate director of epidemiology and surveillance, recently joined Public Health Ontario’s (PHO) webinar series to share ongoing efforts to collect and analyze data on the rates of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) infection in the blood donor population. This blog summarizes presentation highlights and provides an update on Canadian Blood Services’ contributions to the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) seroprevalence research.