Stem Cell Match Puts Teacher in a Heroic Role

Without much thought, Elyse Allen registered her DNA two years ago at a bone marrow drive. Over the summer, a donor registry notified her that her blood stem cells were the only known match in the world for a 7-year-old boy who has leukemia.

“Two months ago, I get a call telling me that I’m a possible match,” Allen said. “I said, ‘For what?’ They said, ‘Bone marrow....’ I agreed in a second. I had no questions.”

Even though she will not get to meet the boy for at least a year, the 37-year-old elementary school teacher from West Los Angeles gave her bone marrow recently at the City of Hope cancer center in Duarte.

During a 30-minute procedure while Allen was under anesthesia, doctors inserted two needles into spots on her upper hip and drew out the marrow. By early evening, she was resting at her mother’s house with nothing worse than a slightly sore back.

Allen is one of 1,000 people who have donated their marrow as part of the nonprofit Gift of Life program operated by an organization based in Boca Raton, Fla., and founded in 1991 to recruit more donors of Jewish descent.

The chances of matching patients and donors is greatly improved when searchers focus on people with the same ancestral background.

Although the number of registered donors has increased over the years, it is still harder for African Americans, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans to find donors than it is for whites.

But even for whites there’s a need for heterogeneity. Jews have an especially difficult time finding matches because the Holocaust severed bloodlines and drastically reduced the number of potential donors, said Jay Feinberg, executive director of Gift of Life.

“As a transplant recipient, I can speak from a patient’s perspective,” said Feinberg, who was saved by a 1995 transplant after being diagnosed with leukemia four years earlier. “The best way to describe it is, Elyse is a hero.”

Feinberg said that registering is quick and easy. A volunteer swabs the inside of a person’s mouth to gather DNA information. Those cells are then analyzed to determine the donor’s tissue type and entered into a database of 75,000 names. Some other registries prick a person’s finger to attain tissue information.

Bone marrow is the starting point for blood production. If infused into a sick person’s body after chemotherapy, it can essentially trick the patient’s body into producing healthy blood cells again.

The procedure is often the last chance for survival for people with 70 known blood diseases such as leukemia and Hodgkin’s disease.

Allen’s blood was tested several times to make sure it was healthy. She then prepared her first- and second-grade students for the week she would be gone by explaining what the transplant entailed.

They responded by making cards that read, “Get Well Soon.” They drew pictures of a small boy in a hospital bed and their teacher hovering over him. Some students insisted on giving Allen a hug.

“They wanted to know the kid’s name,” Allen said. “They want him to visit.”

But under strict registry rules, donors are not allowed to meet their transplant recipients until a year after the donation. That’s enough time to tell if the patient is in remission. Allen doesn’t even know if the boy is in the U.S. or overseas.

“I want to meet this person,” Allen said. “Now.”

Feinberg said it was common for donors to develop long-lasting friendships with their marrow recipients. He frequently travels to New York to visit Becky Faibisoff, the schoolteacher who saved his life by donating her marrow.

“We met for the first time in an airport” in Chicago, said the 35-year-old Feinberg. “It was very emotional.”

Although thousands of patients receive transplants each year, there are still many more people who have yet to find their bone marrow matches.

The National Marrow Donor Program, the largest registry in the country with 5 million members, facilitates 2,000 transplants nationwide each year, said Helen Ng, a spokeswoman for the federally funded registry based in Minneapolis. She said there are 3,000 people in the country seeking donors at any time.

Although the use of needles is still the most common transplant procedure, Ng said, two more techniques have emerged in recent years: in one, a donor runs his or her blood through a machine that collects the same blood stem cells that are found in marrow; and in the other, babies’ umbilical cords, which are rich with the same valuable blood stem cells, are collected.

People can join the National Marrow Donor registry by visiting one of the donor centers or calling (800) MARROW-2.

Those interested in joining the Gift of Life registry can do so by logging on to the organization’s Web site at www.bone-marrow.org.

“To think that I can make a difference in someone’s life is overwhelming,” Allen said. “I’m honored and I’m thrilled.”