My name is Joe and I'm in my second year studying Medicine at Southampton University.

I've chosen to run for DKMS this year to raise awareness for the stem cell register. Not enough people know about it and by signing up you can literally save someone's life.

Blood cancer is the fifth most common type of cancer in the UK, with someone being diagnosed every 20 minutes. Only 30% of the blood cancer patients in need of blood stem cell donation find a donor within their family. The rest rely on the odds of finding a match on the UK stem cell registry.

Finding a person with a matching tissue type for someone in need of a blood stem cell donation is not easy. With more than 17,000 known tissue characteristics, that can occur in millions of combinations, finding a matching donor can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

There are around 2,000 people in the UK searching for a blood stem cell donation each year and over 37,000 people waiting worldwide. The more people that register as a potential donor, the better chances for blood cancer patients of finding a match.