Research Donors
Our donors travel frequently, some travel for long periods of time and many travel to exotic destinations. Unfortunately, there can be a drawback to travel when you're a blood donor. Many donors have returned from their trips to learn that their travel has made them ineligible to continue to donate blood for transfusion purposes. The time frame for travel deferral may be a year (travel to a malarial risk area) or in many cases, indefinite (travel to the UK and/or the rest of Europe for an extended period of time). If you are one of these donors whose eligibility to donate blood for transfusion to others has been affected by travel, you may be interested in donating blood for research.
As a unique blood center with an academic mission, we are pleased to be able to provide medical researchers with much needed blood and blood components to facilitate the development of potentially lifesaving therapies and treatments. We partner with medical researchers at Stanford University and throughout the Bay Area by providing blood products from otherwise healthy, experienced donors who cannot donate blood for transfusion purposes because of travel.
Some of the projects for which Stanford research donors have provided blood components include validation of new tests to detect infectious viruses, trials of new procedures to inactivate viruses in blood, and the development of tumor vaccines.
Research donations are an important way for you to continue to contribute. As a research blood donor, your donations would be added to your number of donations, and continue to qualify you for donor recognition and events at Stanford Blood Center.
All research blood units are drawn by appointment at one of our three
donor centers, located in Mountain View and Palo Alto. If you are interested
in our Research Donor Program or have questions, please call Special Donations
at 650-723-6667. We look forward to seeing many of you who have not been
able to donate because of travel return to the Blood Center as research
donors.
