Bone Marrow Drive Set Up for Teenager

A bone marrow drive for a 16-year-old student who attends the Bronx High School of Science in New York and who is battling chronic myelogenous leukemia will be held Saturday at Wat Thai.

The teen, Piya Vacharasanee, was diagnosed in October 1998. He is being raised by his single father, Chaiyutt, and no one in his family matches his bone marrow type.

The bone marrow drive at the temple--a popular social and religious center within the Los Angeles Thai community--will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The temple is at 8225 Coldwater Canyon Ave.

Chaiyutt Vacharasanee is scheduled to fly in from New York to attend the event.

Because Piya is Thai, the most likely match for a bone marrow donor would be of Thai descent, doctors said.

Unlike blood donations, finding a marrow donor requires an exact genetic match, usually a person from the same ethnic background, said Charif Masri, donor resources and community outreach manager at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte. The City of Hope is the nation’s second-largest bone marrow transplant center in the country.

“It’s like playing the lottery,” Masri said of the often exhaustive marrow-matching searches. “You have to match all six antigens.”

Of the nearly 4 million people who are signed up nationwide as potential donors, only about 220,000 are of Asian descent, said Yuko Yamauchi of the Los Angeles-based Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, an organization that recruits Asians for the national marrow registry.

Because Asians make up only about 6% of the registry, finding an exact match is very difficult, Masri said. Native American and mixed-race patients are also hard to assist because of the lack of potential donors, he said.

Marrow drives have already been held in New York, Yamauchi said, but because Los Angeles has one of the largest Thai enclaves outside of Thailand, officials hope to enlist many potential donors.

Piya, Yamauchi said, is “interested in law, psychology or possibly medicine.” The teen used to volunteer as vice president of youth service at a Red Cross chapter in New York, and he enjoyed kick-boxing and going to the movies. But his leukemia, with its frequent bouts of the flu and headaches, have recently slowed his activities.

For details, call (888) A3M-HOPE.