Johanna Mendoza developed red splotches on her wrist and belly and attributed it to something she ate. She felt stunned to learn she had leukemia
“I thought maybe I was having some type of reaction to something that I ate,” she explains. “It was a weird thing.”A day or so later, she went to the doctor in Mexico, and after some bloodwork, she was told she had low platelets, cells in the blood that help with clotting and in low amounts can indicate a medical problem.
While she knew why it was important to stay in the hospital, she struggled at times. “It was definitely very hard on me,” Mendoza says. “We actually found one really quickly, which was shocking,” Mendoza says. “I thought it was going to be a longer process.” When it comes to bone marrow transplants, also called stem cell transplants, finding a match can be difficult. Stem cells mostly live in bone marrow, the center of the bones., formerly known as the National Marrow Donor Program and Be The Match. HLAs are a type of protein found on most cells throughout the body.
To address the gap in access, NMDP spearheaded the trial to see if people could receive a partial match and still have a successful outcome. “Doing that actually substantially lowers the risk of graft-versus-host disease, even using a donor who less than perfectly matches,” Devine says. “It’s been a game changer.”While the trial investigating post-transplant cyclophosphamide in adults has been completed, the researchers are still looking at this in pediatric populations. Now, adult patients who were not involved in the research can receive this protocol if they can’t find a perfect match.
For some stem cell transplants, the donor is put to sleep with general anesthesia, and a large needle is inserted into the hip to pull out the bone marrow, . In other cases, the donor takes medication to help the stem cells move from the marrow to the blood faster so the stem cells can be extracted directly from the blood.