For ethnic minorities suffering from leukemia, finding the right donor for bone marrow transplantation is a difficult task.
UCLA has access to many bone marrow donor registries throughout the world, said Dr. Gary Schiller, a professor in the department of medicine and a member of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
However, ethnic minorities are underrepresented in these registries.
For bone marrow donations, a near perfect match between donor and patient is crucial so that the patient’s body does not reject the donor’s cells, and so the donor’s cells do not attack the patient’s, said Dr. Alan Ikeda, a member of JCCC and assistant director for non-malignant disease at Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at UCLA.
As a result, minority patients are matched with donors of the same ethnicity, he said.
However, some countries do not have registries at all, which is part of the reason why non-white donors are underrepresented, Schiller said.
The lack of bone marrow donors may be due in part to a lack of knowledge about the process of donation, said Pat Conlee, recruitment director of the Southwest division of Be the Match registry, which is operated by the National Marrow Donor Program.
Many people don’t know that bone marrow regenerates in the donor after three or four weeks, she said. The media also sensationalizes bone marrow donation by portraying it as a painful process, she added.
Be the Match has about 7 million people in their registry. About 5 million of those people are white, she added. When it comes to ethnic minorities, Chicano/Chicanas, blacks and Asians each represent less than 10 percent of the total registry.
“Registry members of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds are especially needed, so every patient has a chance for a cure,” she said.
Leukemia, a cancer that hinders the growth of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, affects the bone marrow’s production of mature blood cells. Once patients are diagnosed with a specific type of leukemia, they go through chemotherapy, Schiller said.
Bone marrow transplantations are used as a last resort for adults who relapse from forms of acute leukemia, Ikeda said.
Bone marrow manufactures all blood cells and platelets, so patients with the cancer get bone marrow transplants to aid in the proper manufacturing of these cells, Ikeda said.
Potential bone marrow donors volunteer by getting their cheeks swabbed to figure out their tissue type.
This tissue type is put into a registry and is matched with a patient who is in need of bone marrow, Schiller said.
Ikeda, who mostly works with leukemia patients, said some wait for months to find a perfect match.
The patients that he deals with usually cannot wait that long for a perfect match, and so opt for cord blood donations. Cord blood contains cells from a baby’s umbilical cord. When these cells are transplanted, they take on the same manufacturing properties of marrow.
Cord blood has an advantage in that it is easier to match to ethnic minorities, but cord blood units may not be enough for full-grown adults with leukemia, Schiller said.
Be the Match takes advantage of UCLA’s bone marrow collection center and transplant services, and also partners with student groups on campus to bring awareness to the lack of ethnic minorities in the registry, she said.
“We’re really looking to our universities to help us during this time period,” she said. The ideal donor, she said, is between the ages of 18 and 25. Universities are thus great communities for outreach, she said.
Be the Match has partnered with groups such as the Black Graduate Student Association, Sigma Nu, the American Red Cross at UCLA and UCLA’s athletic department to hold bone marrow drives on campus, Conlee said.
Last year they registered 359 students, 175 of whom were ethnic minorities. They plan on holding a marrow drive with Sigma Nu on Nov. 18, she said.