DKMS

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DKMS non-profit GmbH

logo
legal form profit company
founding 1991
Seat Tubingen , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management Elke Neujahr, Alexander Schmidt, Sirko Geist
Number of employees 501
sales EUR 108.42 million
Branch Stem Cell Donor File
Website www.dkms.de
As of December 31, 2018

The DKMS non-profit GmbH (formerly German bone marrow donor file ) is a German non-profit organization based in Tübingen . The main field of activity is the registration of stem cell donors, with the aim of giving blood cancer patients worldwide a second chance of life with a stem cell transplant . In order to improve the chances of recovery for those suffering from leukemia and other life-threatening diseases of the hematopoietic system, DKMS is also active as a scientific research organization in the field of blood cancer and stem cell transplants.

Under the umbrella of the DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden , DKMS non-profit GmbH works together with the subsidiaries DKMS LIFE non-profit GmbH based in Cologne , DKMS Life Science Lab GmbH and the DKMS Stem Cell Bank gGmbH based in Dresden . In addition to Germany, DKMS is represented internationally with locations in the USA, Poland, UK, Chile, India and South Africa and works with stem cell donor databases and registers around the world in order to jointly improve the situation for patients and give patients access to therapies.

history

After Mechtild Harf fell ill with leukemia in 1991, her husband, the manager Peter Harf , founded the initiative “Help for leukemia sufferers”. He organized public registration campaigns in which 20,000 donors were registered within a few months. Until then, only around 3,000 potential stem cell donors had been registered in Germany; in other countries the number was significantly higher. Due to the success of his campaign, Peter Harf and his wife's doctor, Gerhard Ehninger , founded DKMS as a non-profit company on May 28, 1991 in Tübingen .

DKMS is one of almost 30 organizations active in Germany for the recruitment and placement of voluntary stem cell donors. The central administration of data files of all German incumbent on the Central Bone Marrow Donor Registry Germany (ZKRD) in Ulm, about the well all searches for potential stem cell donors for patients with a disease of the hematopoietic system are handled in Germany.

In close cooperation with local initiative groups and individuals, the DKMS organizes public registration campaigns to accept new potential stem cell donors. Over 1,200 such campaigns take place every year. Registration of donors is also carried out in companies and is aimed at employees. The company usually bears the registration costs for its employees. More than 7,400 companies took part in such a company campaign (as of September 2019).

DKMS has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden since 1997 . The focus of the foundation is the promotion of scientific projects as well as measures and facilities to improve patient care and aftercare. It ensures compliance with the company's purpose and makes strategic decisions about the direction of the DKMS and its subsidiary organizations. The foundation awards the DKMS Mechtild Harf Science Prize. The prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, has been awarded annually since 2001 and honors the work and research of internationally recognized doctors in the field of stem cell transplantation. In addition, the foundation specifically supports research projects in the field of blood cancer research and awards four scholarships to young scientists every year as part of the John Hansen Research Grant.

Up to and including 2013, the DKMS German Bone Marrow Donor Center in Germany celebrated the day of donation of life on May 28th , which was launched in 2001 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the DKMS in order to highlight the importance of blood cancer. Due to its worldwide relevance, World Blood Cancer Day emerged as a superordinate day for everyone who is concerned with the topic and wants to advance the fight against blood cancer.

In May 2016 the name was changed to the current name. The PR specialist Elke Neujahr has been the chairman of the management board since June 2019 and heads the DKMS with its national and international locations. The chairman of the foundation board of the DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden has been doctor and scientist Marcel RM van den Brink since June 2019.

Key figures

The DKMS file of potential bone marrow and stem cell donors contains over 10 million people worldwide as of June 2019, including over 6 million in Germany. In relation to the proportion of donors living in Germany, DKMS has around 76% of all donors typed in Germany (approx. 8.6 million, as of June 2019) and around 26% of all donors worldwide (approx. 34.7 million, as of June 2019) June 2019). This makes the DKMS one of the leading stem cell donor databases worldwide.

By May 2019, more than 78,000 bone marrow or stem cell donations were arranged by DKMS worldwide, around 66,000 of them from DKMS Germany. In contrast, there are around 39,000 new blood cancer cases in Germany each year.

In the meantime, an average of 20 stem cell transplants from DKMS donors are given to patients in Germany and abroad every day, 15 of them from DKMS Germany.

In 2019, the company employed more than 880 people worldwide (including management), including over 400 in Germany. In 2018, DKMS was able to accept over 600,000 new stem cell donors in Germany and provide blood cancer patients with over 5,000 second life chances.

Donor Policy

Potential stem cell donors for the DKMS are all persons between the ages of 17 and 55 who have no previous diseases of the hematopoietic system or various other health problems (including many respiratory diseases, any form of cancer or dysfunction of one or more endocrine glands ). Also excluded are people who take drugs that fall under the exclusion criteria.

There are several ways to include them in the file: On the one hand, by registering on a public DKMS campaign. A cheek swab is taken with the help of three so-called "Buccal Swabs" (special medical cotton swabs), which are used to determine the tissue characteristics ( HLA characteristics ) and other transplantation-relevant markers and characteristics of the respective person. Since October 2017, registration has been carried out exclusively in this way and no more blood is taken, in order to save effort for the donor and valuable time with typing. The results are just as good as a blood sample. You can also register online with DKMS and receive a registration set that you can use to register from home.

financing

In addition to financial donations from private individuals and companies, DKMS received start-up funding from the German Cancer Aid and the Federal Ministry of Health , which expired in 1994. Since the middle of 1994, DKMS has relied solely on donations for the further quantitative expansion of the database.

Since then, DKMS has received financial contributions mainly in the form of monetary donations from private individuals and companies, as well as lump sums from health systems. Most of this money goes towards registering new donors. In addition, the donor data is continuously updated in order to guarantee availability when it is needed most: When searching for a suitable stem cell donor, every minute counts for the patient. In addition, DKMS is researching to improve the quality of typing in order to achieve a better fit between donor and patient. Internationally, DKMS is also establishing locations and thus creating second life chances for blood cancer patients worldwide.

DKMS has all donor samples typed in the DKMS Life Science Lab in Dresden, the world's largest HLA typing laboratory. The cost of registration for the DKMS in 2018 was 37 euros, while in 1991 it was 600 DM (around 307 euros). DKMS continues to ask its supporters for a monetary donation of only 35 euros per registration, despite the cost increase due to an increase in the quality of the typing findings. The donors can pay for the initial typing at registration, but this is voluntary. For this reason, sponsors can cover the costs for those willing to donate who do not want to pay them themselves. Company campaigns are financed by the company as part of a cost assumption. All further typing in preparation for a specific stem cell transplant was financed from the start by the health insurances , which since 1995 have also provided the means for file operation (staff, IT ).

Scientific Research

In order to increase the chances of successful treatment of blood cancer patients in the long term, DKMS founded the Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) department in Dresden in April 2013. It sees itself as an interdisciplinary network and works not only in Germany but worldwide and in conjunction with national and international transplant centers and research groups on the organization and implementation of trend-setting clinical studies.

The aim of the Clinical Trials Unit is to initiate and support clinical research work in the field of the treatment of blood cancer. Research is focused on allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation. She conducts her own clinical studies to find the best possible treatment for patients and to make stem cell transplants more effective. In addition, she develops methods to make stem cell collection from adult, unrelated stem cell donors more effective and easier. She also focuses on research projects on the role of natural killer cells (NK cell immune system) after stem cell transplants.

DKMS group

DKMS Life Science Lab

The DKMS Life Science Lab in Dresden is one of the largest and most powerful HLA typing laboratories in the world. More than 1.2 million donor samples can be analyzed here every year.

In the DKMS Life Science Lab, genetic material ( DNA ) from potential stem cell donors is isolated from cheek swabs. In a process called HLA typing, these DNA samples are analyzed to determine the exact genetic profile of the human compatibility genes for each newly registered donor. These profiles are the basis for finding suitable donors for patients who need a stem cell transplant. Only an extensive correspondence of the HLA characteristics between donor and patient minimizes the risk of complications after the transplantation. Modern biotechnological processes are used in the DKMS Life Science Lab. In 2013 a new sequencing technology, the NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) method, was established for highly parallel, high throughput typing.

A clinical laboratory and a clinical search unit accredited by the ZKRD ( Central Bone Marrow Donor Register Germany ) are connected to the DKMS Life Science Lab .

DKMS Stem Cell Bank

DKMS gGmbH operates with DKMS Stem Cell Bank gGmbH a stem cell bank for the production, storage and delivery of cryopreserved peripheral blood stem cell products from unrelated donors. The preparations are made available worldwide for patients with an indication for an allogeneic stem cell transplant. This means that stem cell products can be made available even faster in the future in order to actively help patients.

The DKMS Stem Cell Bank gGmbH based in Dresden is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DKMS-profit mbH, also under whose umbrella DKMS cord blood bank operates. Their task is to collect umbilical cord blood donations for the general public, to process, store and convey them to patients. The DKMS has been promoting the storage of umbilical cord blood since 1997, initially as an externally funded project at the Dresden University Hospital.

Umbilical cord blood stem cells are obtained from the blood that is still in the umbilical cord and placenta after the baby is cordoned off . The umbilical cord blood contains stem cells and is therefore a further source of stem cells in addition to the bone marrow and peripheral blood (after stem cell mobilization).

DKMS Life

DKMS Life non-profit GmbH was founded in 1995 and enables around 10,000 cancer patients in therapy to take part in one of more than 1,500 look good feel better cosmetic seminars each year . More than 280 honorary cosmetic experts are working for this. Every year DKMS Life receives more than 180,000 product donations from partner companies in the cosmetics industry, which are passed on to the patients.

DKMS Life has been promoting the public with the event series Charity Ladies' Lunch since 2005 and the dreamball , a charity gala that has been held annually in Berlin since 2006.

Foreign branches

In 2004 the DKMS group began to expand internationally. First a subsidiary was established in the USA, followed by Poland in 2009, Spain in 2011 (until 2018), Great Britain in 2013 and Chile in 2018. Since 2019, DKMS has been active in India as the DKMS BMST Foundation India as part of a joint venture with the BMST Bangalore Medical Trust. South Africa followed in 2020 with a partnership with The Sunflower Fund Partnered by DKMS. With its global commitment, DKMS pursues the goal of improving the situation for blood cancer patients all over the world by making as many people as possible with different HLA characteristics available as donors.

76 percent of the withdrawals from DKMS donors in Germany go abroad. DKMS thus supplies patients from 56 countries with stem cell transplants at around 600 clinics. Today 27 percent of the donors listed worldwide are registered with DKMS, 39 percent of the worldwide stem cell collections are made possible by DKMS donors.

criticism

In Spain, DKMS has been criticized for the amount of money it charges for bone marrow donation. With around 14,500 euros, it charges around 6,000 euros more than the Fundación Carreras . In January 2012, the Spanish Ministry of Health banned DKMS, which has only been active in Spain since December 2011, from continuing to advertise bone marrow donations because it does not have the required permits and is therefore working illegally. DKMS rejected these allegations and stressed that its activities in Spain were covered by European and Spanish law. In addition, the prices for the cross-border shipping of transplants in both directions are comparably high. Spain has severely restricted the work of the DKMS in Spain by changing the law. The Fundación DKMS España began to dissolve in February 2018 because, according to its own statements, it has not been able to establish a bone marrow donor center in Spain in the past seven years.

See also

Web links

Commons : DKMS  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b Consolidated Financial Statements as of December 31, 2018 in the electronic Federal Gazette
  2. ↑ a b Annual Report 2018. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  3. ↑ DKMS German bone marrow donor database: Mechtild Harf - story of a leukemia patient . ( Memento from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) medica.de, October 3, 2001. Accessed June 2, 2014.
  4. ↑ So z. B. in Great Britain there were 170,000, in the USA 320,000
  5. ↑ Information on the DKMS website ( Memento from September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ ZKRD - Information for Bone Marrow Donors - Donor Files in Germany. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  7. ↑ DKMS status (September 2019). Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  8. ↑ DKMS Mechtild Harf Science Award ›DKMS Media Center. April 12, 2017, accessed October 8, 2019 (German).
  9. ↑ John Hansen Research Grant 2020. April 1, 2019, accessed October 8, 2019 (German).
  10. ↑ DKMS German bone marrow donor file: First day of life donation - DKMS is 10 years old . ( Memento of April 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) medica.de, May 28, 2001, accessed on June 2, 2014.
  11. ↑ Please share: May 28th is DKMS World Blood Cancer Day! Retrieved October 8, 2019 (German).
  12. ↑ United - A new look for the global DKMS «DKMS Insights. Retrieved June 3, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Elke Neujahr moves to the top of DKMS , healthcaremarketing, April 25, 2013
  14. ↑ DKMS celebrates 10 million times humanity ›DKMS Media Center. May 27, 2020, accessed on June 16, 2020 (German).
  15. ↑ a b c data and facts . DKMS gGmbH, as of July 2018.
  16. ↑ Number of donors - ZKRD. Retrieved June 18, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Number of donors . ZKRD website, accessed on August 17, 2018.
  18. ↑ Annual report 2017 (PDF) DKMS website, accessed on August 17, 2018.
  19. ↑ DKMS: Annual balance sheet 2018. In: DKMS Germany. DKMS, accessed March 17, 2019 .
  20. ↑ DKMS - Frequently Asked Questions DKMS website, accessed on January 11, 2015.
  21. ↑ German standards for unrelated blood stem cell donation, Version 10 of December 18, 2014 (PDF) Website of the Central Bone Marrow Donor Register (ZKRD) for the Federal Republic of Germany non-profit GmbH, accessed on January 27, 2015.
  22. ↑ Quality can save lives ›DKMS Media Center. August 25, 2017, accessed October 8, 2019 (German).
  23. ↑ A swab can save lives. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Become a donor. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  25. ↑ Annual report 2018. Accessed October 8, 2019 .
  26. ↑ Treasury of Life opens the doors ›DKMS Media Center. September 18, 2019, accessed on October 8, 2019 (German).
  27. ↑ Annual report 2018. Accessed October 8, 2019 .
  28. ↑ About the DKMS . DKMS website, accessed June 2, 2014.
  29. ↑ We research for life ›DKMS Media Center. July 27, 2017, accessed October 8, 2019 (German).
  30. ↑ DKMS Life Science Lab - About Us. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  31. ↑ The treasury: where gold was once stored, the data of millions of stem cell donors now lies. June 4, 2019, accessed October 8, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Expert interview: That happens in the DKMS laboratory with new samples ›DKMS Media Center says: New donors: That happens in the laboratory with your samples› DKMS Insights. Retrieved October 8, 2019 .
  33. ↑ DKMS founds stem cell bank for blood cancer patients ›DKMS Media Center. April 21, 2020, accessed on June 16, 2020 (German).
  34. ↑ Contact and imprint of the DKMS umbilical cord blood bank. Retrieved August 27, 2020 .
  35. ^ History of umbilical cord blood donation . ( Memento from June 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) dkms-nabelschnurblutbank.de, accessed on June 5, 2014.
  36. ↑ Mission & self-image. In: DKMS LIFE. December 1, 2012, accessed October 8, 2019 (German).
  37. ↑ dreamball 2019: We are pretty strong ›DKMS Media Center. September 20, 2019, accessed on October 8, 2019 (German).
  38. ↑ DKMS BMST Foundation India launched ›DKMS Media Center. June 5, 2019, accessed on June 16, 2020 (German).
  39. ↑ DKMS now also active in South Africa ›DKMS Media Center. June 5, 2020, accessed on June 16, 2020 (German).
  40. ↑ Annual report 2018. Accessed October 8, 2019 .
  41. ↑ El País of January 18, 2012
  42. ↑ Spain blocks DKMS in www.aerztezeitung.de from January 18, 2012.
  43. ↑ a b DKMS objects to having illegally recruited donors in www.tagblatt.de from January 19, 2012.
  44. ↑ Spain against German bone marrow donor database DKMS: “We don't need any help!” ( Memento from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: SAZ. January 22, 2012.
  45. ↑ DKMS is looking abroad . In: Doctors newspaper . May 29, 2012.
  46. ↑ DKMS. Retrieved March 7, 2018 (Spanish).
  1. ↑ Not all donor files participate in the Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide (BMDW) initiative , which is why the number of actually registered donors may be higher.