Brought to you in partnership with the Centre for Blood Research, this week's Stories worth sharing is focused on research into a new class of anticoagulants. Anticoagulants, or blood thinners, are medicines used to treat patients who experience unwanted or excess blood clotting. Between clotting and bleeding, there exists a delicate balance. If blood cannot clot effectively, the risk of bleeding increases. If blood clots too easily, there is a risk of heart attack, stroke and other serious conditions. Recent research being undertaken in Dr. Ed Pryzdial’s laboratory at the University of

To give our research trainees an opportunity to showcase their research, while honing their writing skills, Canadian Blood Services teamed-up with Science Borealis and the Centre for Blood Research, to launch our first-ever Lay Science Writing Competition. “It’s important for researchers to be able to explain what they do in an engaging and understandable manner to those who don’t work in research. This competition is a great opportunity for trainees to hone their skills in public science communication.” —Dr. Dana Devine Canadian Blood Services Chief Scientist Whether it was the chance to be

Tackling the gaps in blood safety Canadian Blood Services is committed to blood safety because lives depend on it. To reduce the risk of infectious disease transmission from donor to patient, donors are extensively screened for risk factors prior to their donation. Every blood donation is tested for specific infectious disease agents (pathogens) known to be transmissible through blood. These are just some of the many measures Canadian Blood Services employ to keep the blood supply safe. Despite these safeguards, the risk of infectious disease transmission, though very low, remains. Testing for

At Canadian Blood Services, blood safety is paramount. Screening donors for infectious diseases is an important part of our multi-layered approach to blood safety. One such infectious agent that is known to be transmitted through blood transfusion is Human T-cell lymphotropic viruses (or HTLV). Since 1990, all blood donations in Canada have been tested for HTLV, and since then, there have been no identified cases of HTLV transmission by transfusion. The rate of HTLV in Canadian blood donors has not changed in over 20 years of monitoring, and most donations that test positive for HTLV are from

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! At Canadian Blood Services, we continuously strive to improve our products and the processes we use to manufacture them. Ensuring we provide quality products that meet the needs of Canadian patients, while being good stewards of Canadian health care dollars is core to our mission. One of the players supporting us in this mission is the Centre for Innovation’s Product and Process Development (or 2PD) group. The 2PD group

Researchers have developed a new technique to assess the quality of blood without breaching the sterility of blood bags, according to a new paper published by Dr. Martha Vardaki. The study is part of a larger ongoing effort to develop non-invasive technologies to monitor blood products during storage. “We know that some blood products deteriorate faster in storage than others, but we have no way yet to identify the ‘bad apples’ prior to transfusion,” says Dr. Dana Devine, chief scientist with Canadian Blood Services. For a few years, Dr. Devine has been collaborating on this project with Dr

This week, we highlight work from one of our partners, the Centre for Blood Research. Wayne Zhao describes a review by Dr. Ed Conway, Centre for Blood Research director and adjunct scientist at the Centre for Innovation. This review describes the many roles of thrombomodulin, a protein involved in blood coagulation. Image Wayne is a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Dana Devine at the Centre for Blood Research and a recipient of a Canadian Blood Services Graduate Fellowship. Thrombomodulin is a fascinating protein. It was initially recognized for its role in blood clotting (coagulation

Our latest Centre for Innovation Research Unit examines what’s in a bag of plasma. Plasma can be separated from a whole blood donation (called recovered plasma), or obtained by apheresis donation (called source plasma). Usually, recovered plasma is used for transfusion, and source plasma is sent for fractionation into plasma-derived drugs. In this study, Dr. William Sheffield and Craig Jenkins from the Centre for Innovation tested levels and activities of important plasma factors for coagulation in recovered plasma. They also measured levels of immunoglobulin, from which the plasma-derived

“The gift of transplantation has meant so much to the patients within the highly sensitized patient registry in Saskatchewan and all of Canada.” – Dr. Rahul Mainra, St. Paul’s Hospital, Saskatoon The Highly Sensitized Patient (HSP) program is a national organ sharing program operated by Canadian Blood Services in collaboration with all provincial donation and transplant programs. The HSP program gives provincial programs access to a larger national pool of kidney donors for highly sensitized patients who need a more specific donor match. Patients who are highly sensitized have very few

#WeDoResearch! Through our Centre for Innovation, our engaged network of scientists, medical experts, partners, and collaborators conduct and disseminate high quality, impactful research for the benefit of Canadian patients and the Canadian healthcare system. The Centre for Innovation’s goal is to drive innovation to improve the blood system by facilitating the creation, translation, and application of new knowledge to support a safe, effective, and responsive system of blood and related biological products for Canada. The last year was an outstanding one for the Centre for Innovation team