Suitable Donor May Hold Key to Life for Leukemia Patient : Ventura: Katalina Um’s search for bone marrow match ends. Activist has pushed for greater minority involvement.

Activist-student Katalina Um has beat overwhelming odds by finding a perfect match for her bone marrow, giving doctors their best chance to help her beat a deadly cancer.

Um, 22, a Ventura resident who recently launched a campaign to increase the number of minorities registered as potential bone marrow donors, learned this week that a suitable donor has been found through the National Marrow Donor Program.

Her chance of finding a match was as slim as a million to one because the percentage of Asians enrolled in the program is low, officials said. Um said she received word about the donor in her room at UCLA Medical Center, where she is undergoing chemotherapy in an attempt to knock her acute lymphoblastic leukemia into remission.

“I was ecstatic,” she said Thursday. “I was waiting for this news. I knew it would come.”

Although Um remains optimistic, her doctor said she will not be able to undergo the marrow transplant unless the progression of the disease is halted through chemotherapy. There is a 50% chance she will enter remission, said Gary Schiller, a cancer specialist at UCLA.

If remission is achieved, Um will be given still higher doses of chemotherapy, combined with radiation treatment, to wipe out her immune system, Schiller said. Then the donor’s bone marrow will be infused into her body, he said.

Doctors hope the donor marrow will give her a new immune system that will destroy remaining cancer cells and offer the chance of a longer life. But the transplant procedure carries significant risks, particularly because the donor is unrelated, Schiller said.

The biggest risk is that the new bone marrow will take over her body and destroy not only Um’s diseased cells but her healthy ones, he said. But Um’s youth and positive attitude will aid her struggle, Schiller said.

“She’s really strong and very determined,” he said.

Because Um’s leukemia is so aggressive, she would have virtually no chance to live beyond a few months without the transplant, Schiller said.

Last month, Um launched a campaign to increase the number of minorities registered as potential bone marrow donors. Ethnicity is a primary factor in matching donors with recipients, but just 4% of the 951,000 potential donors listed in the registry are of Asian descent, officials said.

Um and other volunteers formed Friends for Kat and began distributing hundreds of bulletins in minority communities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties telling of the need for donors. Um also has told her story to community groups and talk show hosts, hoping to encourage minorities to become donors.

She knows little about her donor, Um said, except that he is a 32-year-old Pacific Islander.When the time comes, his fresh bone marrow will be flown to UCLA Medical Center to perform the transplant, Schiller said.

Um’s activism started before she was diagnosed with leukemia in July, 1992. For more than a year, she has made twice-monthly treks to the Ventura River bottom and other homeless hangouts to bring them food. She is too sick to attend to that mission now, Um said.

She is concentrating on enduring the chemotherapy and “just praying” there will be no negative side effects from the bone-marrow transplant, Um said.

Sharon Sugiyama, assistant project director for Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, said she has followed Um’s case closely. The Los Angeles-based group has received several calls recently from potential bone marrow donors who were inspired to register after hearing Um’s story, she said.

Still, Um is very fortunate to have found a match, Sugiyama said. Only 10 people of Asian ancestry have found matches out of 400 patients who have searched the registry in the past five years, she said.

“It couldn’t happen to a nicer person,” Sugiyama said. “She has been so positive and has worked so hard to raise awareness about the need for marrow donors.”