“ From the perspective of the blood system, our role I believe is to facilitate research that is required to provide patients with the safest and most effective blood and blood products.”

The 12th Annual Transfusion Medicine Education Videoconference takes place April 12, 2017. Pre-register today.

Blood is red. That’s because of the red blood cells or erythrocytes that whizz around your veins and arteries. The colour is a great visual marker, both clinically and emotionally, but sometimes its very redness hides the other important components that are in you to give. These include plasma, the straw-coloured liquid that carries red blood cells, white cells (leukocytes), other important molecules such as albumin, antibodies and coagulation factors, and tiny fragmentary cells called platelets. What are platelets ? Platelets, or thrombocytes, are spherical cells (shaped like "plates"), much

We are now accepting applications for the 2017 competition of our Intramural Research Grant program!

The R.E.D. blog launched in February 2016 and we’ve published 47 articles that have attracted a combined total of 37,000 readers. We hope you’ve enjoyed them.

Communicating science is an important part of the job for anyone involved in clinical research, whether it takes place face-to-face with the patient, a donor or the wider scientific community. Unfortunately, outreach like this can seem a daunting prospect to the lab scientist and practitioner; it is often easier to hide behind the bench or the stethoscope.

Go back to Making decisions the right way - a global endeavour - Part 1 A risk-based decision-making analysis on babesia in Canada Canadian Blood Services put babesia risk through the risk-based decision-making framework. We were curious about babesia risk and the experience of using the framework to determine a course of action. To find out more, we caught up with Dr. Margaret Fearon, medical director of microbiology at Canadian Blood Services. She is an expert in infectious diseases and conducts surveillance of bloodborne pathogens and emerging infectious threats to the blood supply

Canadian Blood Services helped develop a unique framework for blood operators around the world to help improve and standardize the decision-making process when it comes blood safety.

How long is too long? New study reveals truth about age of red blood cells

Throughout pregnancy, the umbilical cord nourishes the unborn baby with blood rich in nutrients and oxygen. The blood that remains in the cord and placenta after birth is full of stem cells. These cells are like the blood-forming stem cells that can be collected from the bone marrow or circulating blood of adults. Transplantation with blood-forming stem cells can help save the lives of people with blood cancers or diseases like aplastic anemia. For these transplants to be successful, the donor must be very carefully matched with the recipient. Even with a registry of diverse donors like