National Bone Marrow Registry

I'm going to spend this week giving you a little information about Being a Donor. With out the donor who took the time to register and donate stem cells, Kristen could still be waiting for a transplant. Fortunately, Kristen went into remission after her first round of chemotherapy for her AML. She required the Bone Marrow Transplant (aka Stem Cell Transplant), because of the specific mutations on a couple of chromosomes associated with this AML. Please share this information with those you come in contact with. As ethnic backgrounds become more and more diversified, it is more critical than ever to have a large donor registry. To learn more visit www.marrow.org .

What is a bone marrow transplant?
A: Bone marrow transplant is a life-saving treatment for people with leukemia, lymphoma and many other diseases. First, patients undergo chemotherapy and sometimes radiation to destroy their diseased marrow. Then a donor's healthy blood-forming cells are given directly into the patient's bloodstream, where they can begin to function and multiply.

For a patient's body to accept these healthy cells, the patient needs a donor who is a close match. Seventy percent of patients do not have a donor in their family and depend on the Be The Match Registry to find an unrelated bone marrow donor or umbilical cord blood.

Finding a match
If you need an allogeneic transplant, your doctor will look for a donor or cord blood unit that matches your HLA tissue type. HLA stands for human leukocyte antigen, a marker your immune system uses to recognize which cells belong in your body and which do not. HLA tissue types are inherited, so your best chance of finding a match is with a brother or sister. However, 70% of patients do not have a suitable donor in their family.

If you do not have a donor in your family, your doctor can search the Be The Match RegistrySM , operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), which provides access to more than 12 million volunteer donors on the global donor listing. This includes more than 7 million volunteer donors and nearly 90,000 cord blood units on the Be The Match Registry as well as donors available through agreements with international cooperative registries. It can take as little as a few weeks to a few months or more to find a donor or cord blood unit. Not everyone finds a suitable match.

Note: In Kristen's particular case, she had 7,000 possible matches! This is unusual. The best Kristen could get was a 9 out of 10 match of the HLA tissue types.