1/11/2024 0 Comments Stem cell transplant donors![]() “I could’ve had a heart attack at any moment,” he says. His daughter found him unconscious at home one day, and he was admitted to the hospital soon after. The most common side effects he has faced are headaches and fatigue.Ī year ago, though, he experienced a rare but jarringly dangerous side effect of Sprycel. Usually, I have a hard time tolerating those side effects,” Viray says. “Every time I take new medication, I get worried about what the possible side effects would be. So far, he has been on four different medications: Gleevec, Sprycel, Bosiluf, and, most recently, Tasigna. The years of cancer medication has taken a toll on Viray. This balanced approach often leaves residual cancer cells lingering in the patient’s marrow, which can become drug resistant as the cancer mutates. The medication that leukemia patients take without a transplant must be strong enough to kill cancerous white blood cells yet mild enough to not wipe out the healthy ones, which are necessary to maintain a functioning immune system. Instead, he has been undergoing chemotherapy - in the form of pills he takes daily. Still, Viray has not found a suitable match since his diagnosis a decade ago. Although most of the cases are related to leukemia or lymphoma, Singh states there are over 100 other blood diseases that could be cured with a stem cell or bone marrow transplant. AADP now registers around 8000 potential donors each year. ![]() ![]() “Although we focus on Asian donors, if we get an African American patient, for example, who wants to campaign or get help from us, we work with African American communities for that,” she says. Since then, the program’s scope has broadened. “AADP started with the effort of helping Asian communities,” explains Shanna Singh, the Senior Community Engagement Representative for AADP. Though there are almost 1 million Asian members, only 80,000 have Filipino ancestry. While race is often presented as a handful of categories, these categories aren’t specific enough for finding a match. Figure 2: The number of potential donors in 2018, categorized by race. Several Asian leukemia patients consequently went without transplant, eventually dying from their cancers. At the time, the registry only had around 120 potential Asian/Pacific Islander donors. The subset was founded in 1989, just a few years after NMDP was established in 1986. AADP, which works in partnership with NMDP, aims to mitigate the very obstacle that Viray now faces. Last year, his story caught the eye of representatives of the Asian American Donor Program (AADP), who now provide a more elevated platform for his message. Viray and his wife have been spreading his story on social media to raise awareness of this disparity. Asian or Pacific Islander Americans, for example, are almost half as likely as white Americans in finding a match. The likelihood of finding a suitable donor is much less likely in the U.S. Patients are more likely to find a stem cell match from donors of similar ethnicity, and much fewer non-White Americans have signed up as possible donors in The National Marrow Donor Program’s, or NMDP’s, Be The Match registry (Figure 2). In the U.S., racial minorities are much less likely to find a suitable blood stem cell donor than White Americans (Figure 1). His biggest obstacle? He’s Filipino American. In fact, over 12,000 patients each year are in need of transplants like these to cure life-threatening ailments like the various forms of leukemia and lymphoma.įor years, Viray has been trying to obtain this potentially life-saving treatment. While Viray - and many other patients with blood diseases - have several treatment options, the best chance of a cure is usually through either a stem cell or bone marrow transplant. Ten years ago, he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).Įach year, nearly 9000 new cases of CML arise in the U.S. He works in IT support for Jelly Belly Candy Company and lives with his wife and four children. Desimond Viray is a Californian in his early ‘30s.
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