September 17th is World Marrow Donor Day.

Rusfond has been in charge of this work since 2013 and has amassed 57 thousand donor names. September is the month when the organization holds events dedicated to bone marrow donorship across the nation.

The Ministry of Health of Tatarstan and Rusfond chose the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology as the regional registry center. The Institute has all the necessary equipment for the task, including that for HLA phenotype analysis and tissue compatibility testing.

The technological part is handled by the Genetic and Cell Technologies Lab. Lab Manager, Professor Albert Rizvanov says, “We now have about 500 blood samples of potential hematopoietic stem cell donors, or bone marrow donors. More than 100 of them have been included in the registry. We plan to have a thousand potential donors in the next year”. The world registry now contains 27 million names, with 5 million each coming from Germany and the USA.

Another very important part of the research is studying marrow cells for their immunity recovery potential, which is important for HIV treatment. There is ground to believe that CCR5-mutated marrow material can help HIV patients become significantly more resistant to the virus’s debilitating effects.

Moreover, inquiries will be made into HLA types and resistance to various autoimmune and infectious diseases.