By ensuring that innovation respects the rights of research participants, the Research Ethics Board helps Canadian Blood Services advance high quality health research to improve the lives of Canadians.

The Canadian Society for Transfusion Medicine’s annual conference took place in Calgary, Alberta in early June. The Centre for Innovation’s Geraldine Walsh was there and shares her highlights.

Before launching the Canadian Blood Services’ Lay Science Writing Competition for research trainees, the Centre for Innovation made sure to have the right team in place. Valuable support from Science Borealis and the Centre for Blood Research helped make our inaugural competition a success.

Dr. Jason Acker was recently awarded the University of Alberta Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) Graduate Student Supervisor Award. We chatted to Dr. Acker to find out what this award means to him.

As work gets underway, the lead investigators in one of fifteen funded MSM Research projects, discuss the significance of consultation and collaboration to their research, and explain the anticipated impacts and feasibility of introducing alternative donor eligibility screening criteria for source plasma.

The 2018 award named for lawyer and tireless blood activist James Kreppner, will fund much-needed research into legal and regulatory issues around the long-term storage and use of biological samples.

Recipients of the Canadian Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award are individuals whose landmark contributions are 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.

The results of our first-ever Lay Science Writing Competition are in, read-on to discover who gets top-prize and what happens next.

This primer is part I of our new series exploring the future of blood banking. Given that D is also for Development: Canadian Blood Services and the Centre for Innovation have been following the development of pathogen inactivation technologies and how they can be used to improve safety. Read-on to learn more about these technologies and their potential to shift the blood safety paradigm.

Welcome to our new R.E.D. blog series where we focus on our Centre for Innovation development projects to give you a glimpse into the future of blood banking... our future!