The GCAT Pilot Study gets underway this month

Like the full project, the pilot study complies with all the legal requirements and will use the same protocols as the main study but with a smaller number of participants.   The technicians of the Blood and Tissue Bank (BST) who are responsible for helping the participants complete the questionnaire and taking the blood samples and transporting them and the GCAT staff who will process and store them will check that the system works as smoothly as possible and that participants have to wait for a minimum time.

The first participants will be registered blood donors and they will be contacted directly by the BST.  For this reason two centers in large cities with large numbers of registered donors between 40 and 65 have been selected.  The two centers are Hospital Sant Pau, Barcelona and Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol (Can Ruti) in Badalona.

After completion of the pilot the full project will be launched later in the year.