Developments in national and European legislation are closely monitored. The Matchis Foundation is licensed by the Dutch government as a tissue institution, in particular because of the import of stem cell products for transplantation purposes on Dutch soil. 
The Body Material Safety and Quality Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the European Guidelines for tissues and cells apply to Matchis. Every search involves the exchange of data and material (eg for HLA typing). In doing so, we carefully adhere to the European guidelines (GDPR) with regard to data protection, in which the protection of personal data is guaranteed.
 

Matchis employees are experts in the field of the HLA system, the frequencies of antigens, alleles and haplotypes in various populations. Knowledge of national and international regulations regarding donor exchanges and participation in trade unions (WBMT, EBMT, EFI, WMDA) are part of the expertise. Matchis employees participate in these unions. In this way we aim to keep our own level of knowledge up to date and to contribute to international expertise in this area.

Knowledge and experience also play an important role in the logistics of the various flows. This not only concerns the exchange of data, but also the logistics of, for example, requesting blood samples for a confirmatory or more extensive typing of unrelated donors and/or umbilical cord blood units. The application for a stem cell product for transplantation is taken care of and supervised up to and including arrival at the transplant center. Over the years a lot of experience has been gained in working with international donor registries, HLA labs and commercial couriers.

Thanks to years of knowledge and experience, we work quickly and with high quality. The costs of the search are closely monitored. The aim is to find the best donor as efficiently as possible in collaboration with the transplant centers, without making concessions to the HLA match grade and other donor selection criteria. There is also a careful check on the correctness of the invoices we receive, so that no unnecessary costs are passed on to the transplant centers.

Various Matchis employees actively participate in (international) studies on HLA, donors and other transplant-related topics.
Below are a few examples of relevant publications:

• Faster is better than more
• The importance of identifying a back-up donor for unrelated stem cell transplantation
• High-resolution donor-recipient HLA matching contributes to the success of unrelated donor marrow transplantation

You can download the criteria to request a Dutch donor/ cbu here. 

DR-19v6 min criteria to access a donor