NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) manage NHS blood donation services in England and transplant services across the UK. For more information please visit their website.
Country: England
Population Served: 65,000,000
Donors: 1,700,000
Andrea Harmer
Principal Investigator
Andrea is a Consultant Clinical Scientist and the national Head of the Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics laboratories at NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT). She is co-lead for work package 5, which deals with the commissioning of the GENETITAN-MC instruments at NHSBT and other blood services.
She is responsible for 6 laboratories providing services for solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplant programs, platelet transfusion, disease association and donor registry typing as well as a service development laboratory. Andrea is a past chair of the European Federation for Immunogenetics (EFI) Accreditation Committee and past chair of the British Society for Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics (BSHI).
Martin Howell
Alternate to PI
Martin is a Consultant Clinical Scientist and Head of Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics Service Development within NHS Blood and Transplant, England and holds an honorary academic post in the Translational and Clinical Research Institute, University of Newcastle. He is the chair of the NHSBT-Cambridge University Hospitals team which oversees the implementation of Thermo Fisher genotyping pipeline at NHSBT Colindale.
Martin completed his PhD in Genetic Recombination at Imperial College, University of London, followed by postdoctoral research at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Oregon, USA. He has directed clinical Molecular Pathology and Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics laboratories in the UK and has published extensively in disease- and transplant-related immunogenetics.
Shane Grimsley
Shane is the laboratory manager of the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory, NHSBT since 2015. He is NHSBT’s key adviser for red blood cell immunogenetics for the Blood transfusion Genomics Consortium.
Shane has played a pivotal role in identifying new blood group systems, new antigens and novel alleles. As well as helping lead a team of skilled and passionate scientists to resolve the world’s most complex immunohaematology cases, he has contributed to ground-breaking projects that have improved the standards of care for patients.
Mark Whelan
Mark leads a team supporting the safety and regulatory compliance of IT systems and a team that are dedicated to managing and improving the Quality Management System at NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT). He represents NHSBT on the Blood transfusion Genomics Consortium meetings and provides guidance on regulatory matters.
Mark is a Quality Assurance professional with 20 years’ experience working across a range of medicinal product manufacturing, clinical trials and research organisations in both the private and public sector. Mark started his career at CSL Ltd in Melbourne, Australia manufacturing human viral and bacterial vaccines before moving to the UK. In the UK, Mark has worked within Quality Assurance supporting the safety and regulatory compliance of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, Radiopharmaceuticals and Blood, Tissues and Organs.
Lydia Quaye
Lydia Quaye is a clinical bioinformatician at the Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics laboratory at NHS Blood and Transplant Colindale. She is a key member of the genotyping implementation team at this laboratory. She has made many contributions to numerous clinical genetics manuscripts.
Colin Brown
Colin is a Consultant Clinical Scientist and heads the Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics laboratory at NHSBT Colindale. His team oversees the genotyping of approximately 70,000 DNA samples from NHSBT blood donors who have joined the STRIDES NIHR BioResource with the Thermo Fisher Axiom™ UK Biobank_v2.2 research array.