The Bloodgen Project of the European Union, 2003-2009.

The Bloodgen project was funded by the European Commission between 2003 and 2006, and involved academic blood centres, universities, and Progenika Biopharma S.A., a commercial supplier of genotyping platforms that incorporate glass arrays. The project has led to the development of a commercially available product, BLOODchip, that can be used to comprehensively genotype an individual for all clinically significant blood groups. The intention of making this system available is that blood services and perhaps even hospital blood banks would be able to obtain extended information concerning the blood group of routine blood donors and vulnerable patient groups. This may be of significant use in the current management of multi-transfused patients who become alloimmunised due to incomplete matching of blood groups. In the future it can be envisaged that better matching of donor-patient blood could be achieved by comprehensive genotyping of every blood donor, especially regular ones. This situation could even be extended to genotyping every individual at birth, which may prove to have significant long-term health economic benefits as it may be coupled with detection of inborn errors of metabolism.

Robin Coombs: his life and contribution to haematology and transfusion medicine.

Robin Coombs was the last survivor of the distinguished group of immunologists that included Philip Gell, John Humphrey, John Marrack, Peter Medawar and Robert White and who were responsible for the renaissance of British Immunology after the Second World War. He is best remembered for describing the antiglobulin test that bears his name. The antiglobulin test revolutionised the diagnosis of haemolytic diseases and the compatibility testing of blood for transfusion. In all, Coombs authored over 200 scientific papers. Haemagglutination reactions became widely used in the diagnosis of a range of infectious agents. Together with Philip Gell, he devised the classification of allergic reactions; these were published in the textbook "Clinical Aspects of Immunology", which he and Gell first edited in 1963 and which became the leading textbook on medical immunology. Robin Coombs was also one of the founders of the British Society for Immunology.