Each year, Canadian Blood Services’ BloodTechNet award program supports innovative educational projects within the transfusion, cellular therapy, and transplantation communities. One funded project supports histocompatibility and immunogenetics laboratory (HLA lab) directors in-training to expand their learnings through educational lab rotations. Read about the experience of the first participant and the crucial role of HLA lab directors as matchmakers for patients with donated organs, tissues, stem cells and platelets.

Could clues to the successful treatment of some of the world’s most challenging viral infections come from understanding how viruses interact with our body’s clot-creating proteins? Dr. Ed Pryzdial and his laboratory team at the Centre for Blood Research (CBR) have dedicated research efforts to answering questions like this; efforts that have recently earned funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Red cell antigen genotyping is an important tool for healthcare providers in the development of transfusion strategies for patients, though the reports can be complex to interpret. New resources on Canadian Blood Services’ Professional Education website will assist healthcare providers in interpreting these reports, in addition to the support available from the National Immunohematology Reference Laboratory (NIRL).

New findings from University of Toronto’s QUEST research program analyze the impact of albumin on patient outcomes after cardiac surgery, suggesting routine albumin use in this patient group may need to be re-examined.