Welcome

My name is Katharina Harf, Executive Vice President of DKMS Americas. Welcome to our site.

DKMS is the world's largest marrow donor center with 1.7 million registered donors. Yet many in North America are just getting to know us. We're out to change that, and would like to introduce ourselves to you.

Like many of you reading this, my life has been personally touched by leukemia. In 1990, my mother was diagnosed with acute leukemia. I was devastated when neither I, or any other family member was a match to become a donor.

The search for an unrelated donor seemed hopeless because, at the time, there were only 3,000 unrelated donors available in Germany.

Peter Harf, my father, along with our family and friends worked tirelessly trying to find a life-saving match for her by organizing donor drives and successfully recruiting thousands of donors. Despite our efforts, my mother lost her battle, but we continued fighting in her honor, so that one day all patients in need of a marrow transplant would have a fair chance of finding their life-saver.

In 1991, my father along with my mother's physician, Professor Gerhard Ehninger, officially launched DKMS in Germany.

Today, DKMS still holds the distinction as the world's largest marrow donor center having facilitated more than 13,500 donor and patients matches.

In 2005, we expanded the DKMS mission to the United States, and since then, we have registered over 29,000 marrow donors nationwide and facilitated 35 donor and patient matches. But there is still much work to do. Last year, 35,000 cancer patients in the U.S. needed a marrow transplant. But only 3,700 received one. We have to make more matches happen.

We welcome you to join the DKMS family by becoming a donor. Together we can provide hope. Together we can provide a cure. Together we can make a difference.

We look to the future with unwavering determination to continue our mission of saving one life after another. It is the moment of the match that turns heartache into hope, and pain into healing.

Katharina Harf
Executive Vice President, DKMS Americas