Anthony Nolan Trust

The Anthony Nolan Trust owes its existence to the incredible vision and determination of one woman – Shirley Nolan.

When Anthony was born, in 1971, with the extremely rare Wiscott Aldrich Syndrome, the only known cure was a bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor. The question – how to find that donor?

In 1971, there was no such thing as a bone marrow register. There were no mechanisms or processes to analyse or record the variations in each person’s cell tissue which determine whether he or she could be a match.

Shirley was shocked that a cure for Anthony could literally be in the house next door – but she, we, the medical profession, all of us – had no way of knowing. So Shirley directed her energy towards establishing a register. She started working to create a system – a system which would analyse a person’s tissue type, record it in accessible form - and keep the details of each person, one by one, who declared themselves willing to donate bone marrow tissue in the event of a match.

Shirley's work created the first register of bone marrow donors in the world and now, thanks to her vision the Anthony Nolan Trust now operates one of the largest register of donors in the world and at the end of 2009, there were over 400,000 donors on the Register.

Sadly, Anthony died in 1979 without a donor ever being found.

The following teams supported the Anthony Nolan Trust in the 2010 Salford Dragon Boat Festival and pictures of their races in each round can be found via the main menu.