DONOR-PROTECT: Making Plasma Donation Safer, Smarter, and Sustainable

In December 2025, the DONOR-PROTECT project was awarded a €3 million Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to conduct in-depth research into the development of personalised donor health protection policies. We spoke with Project Leader, Professor Katja van den Hurk (Sanquin, NL), to learn more about her background in donor health, the project, and the collaboration with Catalyze towards the successful submission.

Research focussed on donor health

Trained in health sciences and epidemiology, Professor Katja van den Hurk completed her PhD at what is now Amsterdam UMC, working on diabetes and heart failure. “Quite a different topic,” she notes, “but epidemiological studies.” What she missed, however, was proximity to real‑world decision‑making. “I really wanted to have some kind of more practice‑focused work,” she recalls.

That opportunity came when Sanquin, the Dutch national blood institute, was looking for an epidemiologist to lead its Donor Health Group. Here, she could conduct research that is focused on improving policy. Since joining in 2013, she has focused on donor health, especially how blood donation affects iron levels, and has gradually built up her research group.

“That’s what led me to writing this ERC grant”

“We conducted some research that led to policy changes, and we then tested how effective that was with randomised trials, particularly with ferritin‑based deferral policies. In 2024, one of those trials, on ferritin-guided donation intervals, was published in The Lancet, which was a really nice result after several years of hard work.”

However, Katja and her colleagues were considering if they could go a step further.

“The policy we had then was based on measuring ferritin to identify iron‑deficient donors and then extending their donation intervals. But we felt that we could actually predict whether that was going to be the case and adapt more to the individual: what’s the best policy for this person? That was basically the line of thinking that led me to start writing this ERC grant.”

Aims for DONOR PROTECT

When asked about the aims of DONOR-PROTECT, Katja breaks the five‑year project down into three clear objectives. “The first one,” she explains, “is really to dive into the health effects of donations, of both plasma and whole blood donations. We know a lot about whole blood donation effects, but we know little about the effects of plasma donations.”

The first trial in DONOR-PROTECT will be conducted on plasma donation frequencies. Besides monitoring biomarker levels and health status, Katja will work closely with Sanquin’s immunologists to carry out detailed cell measurements and see how different donation frequencies affect immune cells. “I’m really eager to find out what we’ll discover there, and I think it will feed into lots of follow-up studies later,” says, Katja.

Building on that, the second objective is to translate these findings into personalised donation policies:

“Based on our studies on health effects, and how characteristics of donors have an effect on that, we are going to build algorithms to personalise the policies and determine if a person is capable of donating either whole blood or plasma, and at what frequency. We’ll test this in practice in an adaptive trial.”

Katja adds, “During the whole course of the studies, we also have ethical studies to see what is feasible, what is acceptable and also legally possible.”

Creating actionable policy with interdisciplinary expertise

Joining the project is an interdisciplinary team, consisting of Marieke van Ham and Anja ten Brinke (Sanquin Research), Emanuele Di Angelantonio (University of Cambridge), Christian Erikstrup (Aarhus University), Peter van de Ven (UMC Utrecht), Jean-Baptiste Thibert (EFS), and many Sanquin colleagues involved in donor medicine, blood collection, donor administration, ICT, and communication.

In the end of the project, the interdisciplinary team will have developed an algorithm-based strategy that can be adopted as a policy to make sure donors remain healthy, ensuring sustainable donation practices and a more stable plasma supply.

She emphasises, “The ethical and legal part is critical to making sure we are creating policies that are actually implementable across Europe, and possibly worldwide.”

Addressing Europe’s unsustainable plasma supply

A key motivation behind DONOR-PROTECT is to help make Europe less dependent on plasma from abroad. Katja points out that much of the current supply relies on paid donations at very high frequencies.

“We want to build policies that help us to become more strategically independent from countries where they’re paying donors to donate at very high frequencies that might not be healthy for these donors,” she says.

By identifying which donor groups can safely give plasma, and how often, she hopes the project will support a more self‑reliant and ethical European supply.

Applying to ERC Consolidator with Catalyze

Applying to ERC Consolidator is no small undertaking. The programme offers up to €2 million grant, with a limited number of projects also receiving an additional €1 million “top-up”. DONOR PROTECT was awarded the full €3 million grant under the January 2025 ERC Consolidator deadline, which saw 3,121 submissions and 11% success rate.

“It was very exciting,” Katja says, “It was my first attempt, so it was all new to me. The support from Catalyze was ideal. At the beginning of our collaboration my Catalyze consultant shared an impressive timeline, which forced me to have a first draft of the B2 document ready in a very early phase. I wouldn’t have planned it like that myself, but it really helped me to structure everything at an early stage and to get lots of input from people around me.”

“My consultant really knew what is important – what the ERC panel tend to ask and what they want to see. I was also really impressed because I first wrote the B2 document, the more detailed part of the proposal, and based on that my consultant drafted the B1. That first draft of the B1 document was very helpful. Ahead of the interview we also did mock interview practice, which helped me to prepare for different kinds of questions and feel ready for the ERC panel.”

Learn more about the Donor Health research group at Sanquin