CAP: No labeling of blood products based on donor vaccination status
August 2025—In a position statement released in July, the CAP urged policymakers to consider scientific and logistical evidence and to protect the integrity and safety of the national blood supply.
The statement was issued in response to legislation proposed in several states that would require blood product labeling based on donor vaccination status or mandate hospitals and blood collectors to honor requests for directed and autologous donations. Misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines has led to a growing number of patient requests for blood transfusions exclusively from unvaccinated donors.
“Legislation mandating the labeling of blood products based on donor vaccination status or requiring the routine availability of directed or autologous donations offers no proven benefit,” the CAP said in its statement, “and could significantly destabilize the blood supply system.”
The concern that future such legislative initiatives may succeed is growing, write Jeremy Jacobs, MD, MHS, and coauthors in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Jacobs JW, et al. Ann Intern Med. 2025;178[7]:1021–1026). “Ongoing legislative efforts to mandate these requests require unified opposition from the medical and scientific community to uphold ethical, evidence-based, blood allocation practices,” they write.
The authors say fear and misinformation, often perpetuated by social media, drive many of the contemporary requests for blood from unvaccinated donors. “A prevalent falsehood is the belief that messenger RNA-based vaccines alter recipient genetics or that there are elements in vaccines that persist in the blood, causing myocarditis or thromboembolism,” the authors write.
The full CAP position statement is at https://bit.ly/CAP_071025.
New PT/EQA program for POC troponin I
The CAP announced in June a new proficiency testing/external quality assessment program for point-of-care high-sensitivity troponin I. The program will ship in October; participants must enroll by Sept. 30 to participate this year (https://bit.ly/CAP_PCHT-EQA).
“To ensure high-quality testing, it’s important that PT material is available for high-sensitivity troponin assays, including new assays on point-of-care devices,” says Jonathan Genzen, MD, PhD, MBA, chair of the CAP Clinical Chemistry Committee and professor in the Department of Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine, and chief medical officer, ARUP Laboratories.
The new PCHT program will ship with five specimens for point-of-care instruments, including for the Abbott i-Stat.
Streck launches Liquid Biopsy Accelerator Grant
Streck launched its inaugural Liquid Biopsy Accelerator Grant to support innovative research in blood-based early cancer detection and other noninvasive diagnostic strategies. Proposals are due by Aug. 31 at 11:59 PM CST.
The grant will award five applicants with $2,500 in product credit for use with Streck stabilization products. One grand prize winner will receive an additional $7,500 product credit and a sponsored trip to next year’s American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.
The grant is open to academic laboratories and early-stage companies based in the U.S. with research focused on translational or clinical applications of liquid biopsy. Applicants must use Streck stabilization products as part of the proposed work and will be evaluated based on scientific merit, innovation, and alignment with the grant mission.
Selected applicants will be notified by Nov. 12. To apply, go to https://www.captodayonline.com/streck-launches-liquid-biopsy-accelerator-grant/.
Support for subspecialty-based coordination of fellowship recruitment
The CAP joined a nationwide push to align pathology fellowship recruitment through a match or common timeline by signing a new joint statement with other pathology organizations (https://bit.ly/CAP_pathrecruit).
The Association for Academic Pathology fellowship directors committee proposed the statement, which calls for a fairer and more transparent recruitment process that supports trainees and strengthens the pathology workforce. It encourages eligible subspecialties to pursue participation in the 2027 match cycle.
In addition to the CAP and Association for Academic Pathology, 10 other organizations signed the statement, among them the American Board of Pathology, American Society for Clinical Pathology, Association for Pathology Informatics, Gastrointestinal Pathology Society, and Society for Hematopathology.
Datroway approved for patients with advanced EGFR-mutated NSCLC
Datroway has been approved in the U.S. for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer who have received prior EGFR-directed therapy and platinum-based chemotherapy.
This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on objective response rate and duration of response.
Datroway is a specifically engineered TROP2-directed DXd antibody drug conjugate discovered by Daiichi Sankyo and jointly developed and commercialized by Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca. The approval follows priority review and breakthrough therapy designation by the Food and Drug Administration based on subgroup results from the TROPION-Lung05 phase two and TROPION-Lung01 phase three trials.