About us

Anthony Nolan and his mother, Shirley

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

Shirley’s son Anthony was born in 1971 with an extremely rare form of luekameia. The only cure was a bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor. The big problem was that no such thing as a bone marrow register exsisted in 1971.

There were no processes to analyse potential donors cell tissue to determine if they were a suitable match. In other words, finding a suitable donor was like looking for a needle in a haystack but, to make matters worse, the haystack was spread all over the world, and there was no simple way to recognise the needle.

Shirley decided to take matters into her own hands. She put all her energies into creating the first register of donors in the world. This system retained the details of every person who had volunteered themselves as a donor, analysed every donor’s tissue type, and recorded it in an accessible form.

Sadly, Anthony passed away in 1979 without a donor being found. He was 7 years old.

Shirley passed away in 2002 but thanks to her vision, The Anthony Nolan Trust now operates one of the largest registers of donors in the world.

As a direct result of that same vision, the World Marrow Donors Association now offers access to 9.2 million donors worldwide.