Research | Australian Red Cross Blood Service

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Platelets under the microscope

May 24, 2018

I am interested in how platelets, the smallest blood cells, function.

Trained killers to join cancer fight

May 17, 2018

Researchers from the Australian Red Cross Blood Service are collaborating with the Westmead Institute for Medical Research to trial a revolutionary treatment for people whose cancers have returned and who currently have little hope of a cure.

Blood types and doughnuts: What are blood types and why do they matter?

March 29, 2018

What’s your type?

Blood type, I mean. You may already know that you’re an “O negative” or a chirpy “B positive.” Or one of many other combinations of A, B, O positive and negative. But what do those letters mean, why do they matter, and what does the future of blood typing hold?

Blood groups beyond A, B and O: what are they and do they matter?

January 12, 2018

There are many molecules on the surface of red blood cells that vary between individuals, and these form the basis of blood groups.

Explainer: what’s actually in our blood?

January 12, 2018

Blood is vitally important for our body. As it’s pumped around our body through veins and arteries, it transports oxygen from our lungs to all of the other organs, tissues and cells that need it.

Essays on blood: why do we actually have it?

January 12, 2018

Just as a village can’t grow into a city without some form of transport (road, rail or river) that provides necessary interconnections for it to flourish, living things are limited in the size they can reach unless they have some form of circulatory system to transport nutrients and remove waste.

Disease in the dust

January 12, 2018

Every year in Australia over 300 people are reported as suffering from a debilitating disease known as Q fever. The Blood Service is currently undertaking research into this poorly understood disease to help map the true numbers of those infected across Australia.

Blood donor research? What’s that?

January 12, 2018

It’s a question we face, every time we meet someone new: ”Blood donor research? What’s that?”. When we tell someone we work as researchers at the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, we usually get the “right, blood…” comment, expressed with varying degrees of confusion and discomfort.

Research and development: from vein to vein

January 12, 2018

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service manages a pool of close to half a million volunteer donors and processes around 1.3 million blood donations every year to provide blood products to hospitals throughout Australia.