A family from Gourock, Scotland, is launching a public appeal to track down an anonymous 19-year-old Polish stem cell donor who once saved their mother’s life, as they now need his help again to secure her full recovery from leukaemia.
Fifty-eight-year-old Lisa Semple was diagnosed with leukaemia and underwent a life-saving stem cell transplant last year. None of her four children, including 21-year-old Charlie Semple, were able to be a matching donor after genetic testing, forcing her medical team to turn to the international stem cell registry to find a compatible unrelated donor. A 19-year-old teenager based in Poland ultimately stepped forward, donating his stem cells for Semple’s transplant on October 13, 2025.
Months after the transplant, Semple’s family says her best shot at a full, long-term recovery is a follow-up procedure called a donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI). This treatment involves infusing healthy white blood cells from the original donor into the patient’s bloodstream to help eliminate any remaining cancer cells and prevent relapse after the initial transplant. But when the international donor registry DKMS, which facilitated the original donation, attempted to reach out to the 19-year-old donor for the DLI request, they hit a wall: he could not be contacted.
Because the donor chose to remain anonymous when he joined the registry per DKMS protocols designed to protect both donors and patients, the Semple family has no way to reach him directly. Charlie Semple, Lisa’s youngest child, emphasized that the family has no interest in uncovering the donor’s identity. Their only goal is to get a response from him to learn if he is willing to donate again.
“It’s completely up to him what he wants to do and whether he would want to donate again,” Charlie told BBC Scotland News. “All we want is for him to respond to the registry.”
There are multiple plausible explanations for why the donor has not yet responded, per the family: he may have only intended to make a one-off donation, or he could have moved and not updated his contact information with the registry. To increase their chances of finding him, the Semple family has reached out to the British Embassy in Poland for assistance, and Charlie and his three siblings have shared a public appeal across social media platforms. They hope the donor’s family members, friends or acquaintances will recognize the story by the donation date and forward the appeal to him.
Charlie shared the family’s difficult journey over the past year: after Lisa endured grueling chemotherapy, the entire family had to isolate from her to protect her as her immune system rebuilt following the stem cell transplant. It was a major blow when Charlie and his siblings all learned they were not matches, as the family had assumed a related donor would be easy to find. While Lisa has now been able to return home and the family was starting to get back to normal life, the current need for a second donation has thrown them into uncertainty.
“It is hard to see her so stressed at the moment about not knowing what is going to happen next and whether or not she will make a full recovery,” Charlie said. “We would be completely over the moon if we could find the donor and she could have the blood transfusion.”
In a joint statement released in response to the appeal, DKMS teams in the UK and Poland said: “Everyone at DKMS is deeply saddened by the difficult situation Lisa and her family are facing. Our thoughts are with them during what is undoubtedly an extremely challenging time. We understand that they are seeking answers, and hoping to reconnect with the donor who made Lisa’s initial transplant possible.”
The organization noted that it cannot comment on the details of individual donor cases, but that it “always makes every reasonable effort to contact matching donors to share requests for a further donation.” DKMS also added that there are occasions when donors are unable to or choose not to proceed with an additional donation, and that any decision the 19-year-old makes must be respected.