Instead of blood, you can donate blood stem cells

Nurse Maria Liza Pamintuan works at the bed of Smith as she donates PBSCs at the SCCA. Photo: TNS

As a college student in Illinois, US, Robin Smith was a regular blood donor who considered it a civic duty to open her veins.

But she fell out of the habit, rushed by the demands of life and work, until November last year, when the 26-year-old research technician at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch) discovered a whole new way to donate.