Optimisation of global stem cell donor recruitment based on analysis of unsuccessful donor searches

Despite over 41 million registered potential volunteer stem cell donors worldwide, many patients in need of a transplant do not find an HLA-matched unrelated donor or cord blood units, with the respective odds differing significantly between various populations. In this study, we analysed data of 2205 unsuccessful real-life donor searches sent to the DKMS Registry to identify populations in which further donor recruitment would be associated with particularly large patient benefits. For that purpose, we estimated haplotype frequencies of 67 donor populations at various sample sizes and entered them into two different mathematical models. These models assessed patient benefits from population-specific donor recruitment, operationalised by the number of originally unsuccessful searches that may become successful due to new donors. Consistently, across the different mathematical models and sample sizes, we obtained several countries from East and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, China, and the Philippines) and the population of Asians in the USA as countries/populations where donor recruitment activities would be particularly beneficial for patients. We also identified various countries in Southeast and Central Europe as possible target regions for donor recruitment with above-average patient benefits. The results presented are registry-specific in the sense that they were obtained by optimising unsuccessful searches that had been sent to the DKMS Registry. Therefore, it would be desirable to apply the presented methods to a global data set that includes all unsuccessful stem cell donor searches worldwide and uses population-specific haplotype frequencies based on all donors available in the WMDA Search & Match Service.