Due to the unique genetic make up of Armenians, it is nearly impossible to find suitable matches among the existing international registries and hence a great number of Armenian children and adults have lost their lives due to the lack of compatible donors. To address this imbalance, a volunteer donor registry for bone marrow transplant has been established in Armenia, which will help to overcome this difficulty.

The ABMDR was founded in 1999 as an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization, whose mission is to ensure that every ethnic Armenian struck with a life threatening blood-related illness is able to find hope for long-term survival through the identification of a genetically suitable bone marrow match.
             
The ABMDR is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) and Bone Marrow Donor Worldwide (BMDW) sharing its database information with other registries around the world. In January 2008, ABMDR became a member of National Marrow Donor Program – NMDP. In February 2005 the “Mariana Kazarian” center was opened in Los Angeles

In November 2007,  after many years of diligent efforts, The ABMDR was able to acquire a facility to establish the new ABMDR Stem Cell Harvest Center in Yerevan, As the only center of its kind in the region, the Center will bring the life-saving procedure of stem cell transplantation within the reach of many more patients, and will play a vital role in the treatment of other diseases as well, such as many cancers, diabetes, and heart ailments.

Already the ABMDR's laboratory in Armenia has transformed the country into an active player in the medical community; In 2006 ABMDR became the first laboratory of its kind in the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet republics) to receive accreditation from the highly respected European Federation of Immunogenetics (EFI). The ABMDR operates recruitment centers in Los Angeles, Boston, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria.