Bone Marrow Registry
You Can Be The Hero
Every year over 18,000 people are diagnosed with a life-threatening disease that can be treated
with a stem cell transplant. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HCT) is a
standard of care for definitive treatment of many disorders, such as: leukemia, aplastic anemia,
genetic disorders, and autoimmune conditions. The success of an allogeneic transplant is highly
dependent on finding a human leukocyte-antigen (HLA) matched donor.
The ideal donor is a sibling but a matched sibling is only found 30% of the time. The remainder of patients require a
search for an unrelated donor from a national registry. The chances of finding an HLA matched
donor are highly dependent on race and nationality. Whereas the likelihood of finding a match
for white patients is 79%, the likelihood for black or African American is only 29%. Other
ethnicities also have decreased and varying rates of success finding a match. One of the biggest
reasons for this challenge is the lack of minority representation in donors on the registry. 60% of
the donors on the National Marrow Donor Registry Program (NMDP) are white.
More donors, especially those with diverse ethnic backgrounds, are needed to volunteer for the
Be The Match donor registry.
Every donor on the registry has the potential to be a match and offer a life saving treatment that would otherwise not be available.
Donation can be as simple as a blood draw for match confirmation and an apheresis procedure similar to blood donation.
Please consider being someone’s hero and signing up today with a simple 2 minute online form!
