Research. Education. Discovery.

For patients who have cardiac surgery, the risk of severe blood loss is high if they have a condition called acquired hypofibrinogenemia — this means they have an undersupply of an essential blood clotting protein called fibrinogen. Doctors aim to minimize their bleeding with a fibrinogen replacement product, either cryoprecipitate or fibrinogen concentrate, to restore clotting factors to normal levels. A recent study that compared both products could have an impact on how cardiac patients are treated in Canada.

“There is absolutely no evidence of transfusion transmission for COVID-19, or any other coronavirus,” says Dr. Steven Drews, associate director of microbiology at Canadian Blood Services.

Cord blood is a rich and important source of stem cells for transplantation. Recent research from Canadian Blood Services has shown how tests of thawed cord blood samples could be improved so that they produce results that better reflect the quality of the cord blood unit. Improving these tests could increase the number of cord blood units that can be released for transplantation.

Congratulations to Dr. Aditi Khandelwal, winner of the 2019-2020 Lay Science Writing Competition. Today’s post features her heartfelt winning entry.

The Centre for Innovation is delighted to announce the winner of the 2019-2020 Canadian Blood Services Lay Science Writing Competition. Read on to find out who won and when you can read their heartfelt winning entry.

Do you know of an individual whose contributions might be worthy of the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award? To receive this honour, a nominee’s landmark contributions must be recognized as both extraordinary and world class in the field of transfusion or transplantation medicine, stem cell or cord blood research in Canada and/or abroad. Nominations are open until May 19, 2020.