The fundraising focus of last year’s Red & White Ball, as well as this year’s, were major topics at the latest quarterly meeting of The Blood & Tissue Center Foundation board of directors.
South Texas Blood & Tissue is instituting a new scholarship program for high school students in 2025-26, said Audra Taylor, Vice President, Blood and Tissue Operations.
Supporting the rebuilding of the high school blood donor base was the goal of last year’s Red & White Ball fundraising efforts. Twenty-four student blood donors and one volunteer will receive scholarships from a fund of $60,000, she said.
“We’re making progress with high school drives, but there’s more work to be done,” Taylor said,
Adrienne Mendoza, Chief Operating Officer for BBG Advanced Therapies, told the board about the expanding interest in the organization’s cell collection vehicle, or mobile leukapheresis center. The goal of this year’s Red & White Ball is funding a second vehicle.
The vehicle would greatly expand access to a new generation of cell-based therapies, she said. The biggest impediment to the growth of these lifesaving treatments is the small number of locations that can collect cells from patients or donors.
“The mobile leukapheresis center is a game-changer,” Mendoza said. “People are looking at our organization as a big innovator in the field.”
Two different types of organizations already have expressed interest in cell collections aboard the mobile center, which currently is undergoing validation testing. Donor collections could begin late in the third quarter or the early fourth quarter of this year, Mendoza said.
