You might be the right person
Register as a stem cell donor with DKMS and you might prove to be a patient’s genetic twin – and have the opportunity to give them a chance at a new life.

Only a third of patients who need a stem cell donation find a suitable donor within their family. The majority of patients need a donor who is not a relative.

However, the probability that the tissue characteristics of two strangers will be a match currently ranges from one in 20,000 to well over one in several million.

We have taken on the vital mission of finding a suitable stem cell donor for every leukemia patient–a task that resembles trying to solve a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

And this is why we need you! For many patients, the only chance of a cure is to receive a transplant of healthy stem cells from their genetic twin.

Following your registration, you will remain an active donor in our database, either until you withdraw your consent or until you reach the age of 61.

Our combined success
Thanks to the commitment of over 2.644.049 registered potential stem cell donors, at least 12 DKMS donors a day now donate stem cells for patients across the world. Since DKMS was founded, over 28.512 patients have been given the chance to have a healthy life.

But many patients are still waiting. In Germany alone, one in five patients still has not found a suitable donor. This is why we need you!

Who can become a stem cell donor?
You are a candidate as a stem cell donor if you

• are between 18 and 55 years old,
• are physically healthy,
• weigh at least 50 kg and have a body mass index of less than 40, and
• live in Germany or no further than 50 km from the German border.

Exclusion criteria
Please also take into account that we cannot include any persons in the donor center who belong to a risk group pursuant to the guidelines of the German Medical Association’s guidelines or if you suffer from one of the following illnesses/diseases:

• Cardiovascular system diseases, such as: coronary heart disease, heart attack, cardiac insufficiency, cardiac arrhythmia which requires treatment, or poorly controlled high blood pressure
• Respiratory diseases, such as: severe, chronic asthma (medicinal therapy on a regular basis), chronicbronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, or a pulmonary embolisms
• Disorders pertaining to blood, blood coagulation system or blood vessels, such as: autoimmune-induced anemias, haemophilia A (blood disease), or a deep vein thrombosis
• Mental illnesses and those of the central nervous system, such as: depressions requiring treatment, psychosis, schizophrenia, epilepsy, or multiple sclerosis
• Illnesses of the auto-immune system, such as: rheumatoid arthritis (rheumatism), collagenosis, Crohn’s disease, or ulcerative colitis
• Diseases of the endocrine glands, such as: diabetes mellitus, or Graves disease
• Illnesses which are considered to be malignant (cancer)
• Infectious which are infectious, such as: hepatitis B or C which has still not been cured, chronic Lyme disease, or HIV
• Individuals with transplants of dontated organs or tissues, such as: kidneys, heart, skin, cornea, dura mater, or Achilles tendon
• Individuals who suffer from an addictive disorder, such as alcohol or other drug and medication dependencies

You are not eligible as a donor?

In order to safeguard your health as a donor as well as that of the patient, we can unfortunately not include you in our donor center if one or more of the aforementioned exclusion criteria apply to you.

However, even if you cannot register as a stem cell donor, you nevertheless have the opportunity to support DKMS’s work and to therefore give people a chance to live: You can donate money, or organize a benefit or donor drive with us!

Online registration
With online registration, you can register as a donor in the comfort of your own home. Simply complete the following form and we will send you a donor kit with cotton swab. With this cotton swab, take a sample from the inner lining of your cheek (buccal mucosa) and send it back to us. We will then save the results of the analysis of your buccal mucosa in our database, anonymize it, and make it available for worldwide patient searches. This will cost you nothing. However, we are grateful to those donors who are able to at least partially finance the cost of their registration.

If you would like to register several people, you can order up to five donor kits from us. If you need more than this, please send an e-mail to Briefspenderbetreuung@dkms.de or call us at +49-221-9405-820.

Who pays for tissue typing?
Tissue typing, the determination of your tissue characteristics by a laboratory, costs DKMS 50 euros per registration. DKMS has to fund this fee through monetary donations. This is why we are grateful to those who are able to support us by making a monetary donation.

Permanent facilities
Our motto: "Become a stem cell donor easily. DKMS is coming close to you."In many cities people have the opportunity to get registered as a potential stem cell donor. When you are in good health and between 18 and 55 years old, you can donate 5 millilitres of blood. This blood sample will be analyzed for determining your tissue characteristics and then be filed in the DKMS database.

Public donor drive
We organize public sessions across the country where you can register as a potential lifesaver in our database. Find a session near you and give others a chance at a new life. Simply enter your zip code in the search field.

Once registered– always registered
Donors who register with DKMS or another stem cell donor registry remain on file until they revoke their registration or turn 61. There is no need to register with several stem cell donor registries. If a patient requires a stem cell donation, the search for a matching donor will start within Germany and then be broadened to include international donor registries.If you move or change your name, please inform us or the stem cell donor registry with which you are registered of your new contact details (new address, new name).

Analysis of tissue characteristics
Once we receive your blood sample or buccal swab, tissue typing will take place. A laboratory will determine your individual tissue characteristics (HLA characteristics). Following tissue typing, we will send your tissue characteristics together with your anonymized donor number to the ZKRD, the German National Registry of Blood Stem Cell Donors in Ulm, Germany, and to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) in the USA.

From this point on, your tissue characteristics will be available for patient searches from across the world. If your tissue characteristics match those of a patient, DKMS will get in touch with you.

In order to save vital time when a donor proves to be a match for a patient, we carry out high-resolution (very detailed) typing of the ten most important tissue characteristics relevant to transplantation. This means we do not have to carry out additional analyses. It also saves time as it is easy to see whether a donor is suitable for a particular patient.

Your address is vitally important
A few weeks after your registration, you will receive your personal donor card through the mail with your donor number on it. Please refer to this number whenever you contact us, e.g. when you need to inform us of a change of address.

We will also remain in contact with you over the years. This means that we can make sure you are kept up-to-date regarding the vital work being undertaken by DKMS and that we always have your current address and contact details. This will enable us to get in touch with you easily if you do prove to be a match for a patient.

If you are a suitable donor
In our experience, just five in every hundred potential stem cell donors are asked to make a stem cell donation within the ten years following registration. For young donors, the probability of donating is around 1% in the first few years after tissue typing has taken place.

But what happens when your tissue characteristics do prove to be a match?

Confirmatory typing (CT)
If your tissue characteristics mean that you may be able to be a stem cell donor for a particular patient, you will receive a detailed health questionnaire from us so that we can identify any criteria that may exclude you early on in the process. Confirmatory typing (CT) will also follow. This is where your tissue characteristics are analyzed again using a blood sample to ensure that you are a 100% match for your patient. Your blood will also be checked for specific pathogens, such as HIV and hepatitis.

If you have any questions about stem cell donation at this point, a personal advisor from the DKMS team will be available to answer your questions.

Your Decision to Give the Gift of Life
If you do turn out to be a suitable donor for a patient, you must decide whether or not you want to proceed with the donation process. Following a final examination and consultation by a doctor, the donor is then asked to give written informed consent for donation.

About a week before the transplant date, the patient undergoes a preparation phase in which abnormal stem cells in the bone marrow are destroyed using chemotherapy and possibly also radiation therapy. From this point on, the patient cannot survive without receiving a transplant of healthy stem cells from the donor.

Despite our efforts to make the public aware of stem cell donation, a number of myths surrounding the process still exist. Here, we give you the true facts behind some of the most common myths.

Myth 1 / Wrong:
Stem cells are taken from the spinal cord.

Fact:
The spinal cord (a part of the central nervous system) and the bone marrow (the most important organ for blood formation in humans) are often confused. The spinal cord of the donor remains untouched. If a surgical procedure is required, bone marrow or stem cells are taken from the iliac crest. Cell collection is done under general anesthetic.

Myth 2 / Wrong:
Surgery is always required for stem cell donation.

Fact:
In addition to a surgical procedure namely the removal of bone marrow from the iliac crest there is also another means of collecting stem cells. This is called peripheral stem cell collection and is actually the procedure that is most frequently used (in approximately 80% of cases). This involves collecting stem cells from the blood using a special outpatient procedure that does not involve the use of anesthesia.

Myth 3 / Wrong:
If I donate stem cells, then I can never get them back.

Fact:
The body will generate new stem cells within two weeks. The procedure is comparable to blood donation and does not result in the permanent loss of stem cells.

Myth 4 / Wrong:
The donor must have the same blood type as the patient.

Fact:
The stem cell transplant does not come down to the same blood type, but to the most exact match possible between the tissue characteristics (HLA characteristics) of the donor and of the patient. Finding a 100 percent match is very complicated and is often compared to looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. If a donation is possible, then the stem cell recipient even assumes the blood type of the donor.

The registration and tissue typing of a new potential stem cell donor costs the German Bone Marrow Donor Center 50 EUR. The bulk of the costs are for analyzing the tissue types in the lab. We are pleased to note that many of our donors support us here with a voluntary monetary donation.

But not everyone can pay the 50 EUR for the tissue typing so please help us to ensure that the willingness to donate does not depend on money. Every euro counts in the fight against leukemia and in the search for the matching donor.

If, for instance, you are unable to donate stem cells for health reasons, your donation can still give people hope for a new life. With a monetary donation you can become a sponsor for other potential stem cell donors who cannot or can only partially afford the tissue typing.