Bone Marrow and Stem Cells
If Only There Had Been a Donor for Katie...
Katie was such a precious little girl. She loved to sing songs, make crafts and play games
with her brother and cousins. She was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) not long after
her second birthday. After treatment with chemotherapy, the Leukemia went into remission but it
eventually came back, just days before her third birthday. The only thing that could cure her of
this life threatening disease was a bone marrow transplant.
Bowling for Bone Marrow 2013
"Throw a strike for the Gift of Life"
Saturday, August 24th, 2013
Find out more HERE!
Thursday. June 6, 2013
Research Update 2013 by Drew Kidd
The past year has been one of the most exciting for the KBBMA on the research front. Certainly, a highlight for the organization was bringing Dr. Claude Perreault of the University of Montreal, the head of one of the two research teams currently being funded by the KBBMA, down to Windsor for a public speaking engagement. For his public talk, Dr. Perreault discussed the efforts of his lab to combat graft versus host disease (GVHD) through enhancement of graft versus leukemia (GVL), the ability of donor T-cells to combat cancerous cells in the host body. The Perreault lab has been able to decrease the risk of rejection and GVHD by targeting the MiHAs (the cell receptors governing the body's immune responses) with specially primed T-cells that are injected directly into the patient. Early clinical trials have demonstrated that this treatment can reduce the risk of GVHD down to 10%, potentially reducing patient mortality in Canada alone from 60,000 to an estimated 1,600 a year. Dr. Perreault discussed his research in further detail at another talk at the University of Windsor; both talks were tremendous successes and we would like to thank the Caboto Club, the Department of Biology at the University of Windsor and especially Dr. Lisa Porter of the University of Windsor, head of the other research team funded by the KBBMA, for all their help and hard work in organizing them.
Far from being a dry discussion of the science behind his work, Dr. Perreault provided a vibrant, personal story of a life in research, and he also provided some words of advice to any aspiring young scientists in the audience. Among them were two students at Vincent Massey Secondary School, Melanie Grondin and Shawn Liu, who had recently made not just their school but their entire city proud. As Windsor's first participants in the national BioGENEius competition, Shawn and Melanie followed up some of the work that Porter lab grad student Kaitlyn Matthews had completed on how gene expression levels change as bone marrow cells divide and grow, and used this data to identify markers for at-risk cultures. Their work has the potential to more safely expand and control bone marrow cultures in a lab or hospital setting. Melanie and Shawn were rewarded with first prize at the Regional Competition for Southwestern Ontario, as well as awards for Best Genomics Project and Best Entry From a New Participating School, and subsequently competed at the National Competition in Ottawa where they received an Honorable Mention for their work. Through its funding of Kaitlyn, who mentored Shawn and Melanie throughout the entire process, the KBBMA was able to provide financial support for their work, and we wish both of these promising young scientists the best in the future!
Both Kaitlyn and her fellow Porter lab graduate student Ingrid Qemo have continued their very impressive work at the University of Windsor through funding provided by the KBBMA. Kaitlyn completed her Master's Thesis, “The Role of Spy1 in Hematopoiesis: Implications for Blood Malignancies,” in December. Kaitlyn found that the cell cycle regulator Spy1 is more highly expressed in the early stages of blood stem cell growth and that it drops off as the cells mature, implying that it plays an important role in retaining stem cell characteristics. She further discovered that when Spy1 is removed from human leukemia cells, they decrease in growth and proliferation. Kaitlyn is currently preparing her findings for publication, as well as mentoring a new undergraduate student, Jack Pfaff, for a project on the role of Spy1 in multiple myeloma. Ingrid's work has focused on the role of Spy1 in generating safe stem cell cultures for future bone marrow transplantation therapies. By examining the precise mechanisms behind this particular protein's role in stem cell growth and development, she has demonstrated the possibility of more safe and efficient means of growing, generating and expanding existing stem cell cultures for cancer patients. On the basis of this work, she was awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to continue her efforts. Both Ingrid and Kaitlyn would like to thank the KBBMA for all their help and support, and we in turn would like to thank them, as well as Dr. Porter and Dr. Perreault, for making us proud!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Get Swabbed Events in Honour of Lori
As a mother, wife and elementary school teacher, Lori is very busy. So when she started to feel tried, she blamed it on the “Busy Mom Syndrome”. Only after much blood work and three bone marrow biopsies did Lori learn that she had a different syndrome- Myelodyplastic Syndrome (MDS). Lori’s best hope to getting her health and continuing in her normal Mom duties is a stem cell transplant.
Lori’s hope that her story will inspire people to register with OneMatch to help patients, like her. You can make a difference in your community, your country and around the world by registering at onematch.ca
Wednesday, June 12 - 4pm-8pm Recreation Centre 242 Talbot St North, Essex
Thursday, June 13 - 4pm-8pm CBS Office 3909 Grand Marais Rd East
Monday, April 22, 2013
Parks & Rec BBQ and Bake Sale Swab Event
Get Swabbed! Thursday, May 30 11:30am to 2:00pm at 2461 McDougall Ave.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
St Clair College Swab Event
Get Swabbed! Monday March 25, 2013 10am to 4pm at St. Clair College.
A Journey in Bone Marrow Transplantation
Thursday, April 4, 2013 at the Caboto Club with guest speaker Dr. Claude Perreault.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Family Calls for Stem Cell Donors
13 year old Alex Blake’s family are calling on people to join the marrow registry in hopes that a match can be found for their daughter.
Diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia Alex has already undergone several days of chemotherapy in hopes to push the cancer into remission and now needs a stem cell transplant in hopes of developing a new immune system.
You can read the full article at CBC News website.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia
An experimental treatment using a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS has been used to reprogram a young girl’s immune system to genetically kill cancer cells.
Photo by Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Emma, who had been sick with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since she was 5 had relapsed twice after undergoing chemotherapy. Running out of options her parents turned to an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
You can read the full article at The New York Times website.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
National Public Cord Blood Banking Program
This past weekend One Match openned its new National Public Cord Blood Banking program.
Click here to view the CBC story.
Operation Alysha Blood Donor Drive
If you live in the Guelph area please come out and support the Operation Alysha blood drive Thursday November 29th, 5-7pm at Silvercreek Parkway Blood Donor Clinic.
For more information visit the Operation Alysha website.
Tuesday, November 6th, 2012
Cord Blood Collection Will Be Phased into Canadian Hospitals
Cord Blood Collection Will Be Phased into Canadian Hospitals
Cord Blood collection will be phased in over the next few years in hospitals for mothers in Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver .
Click here to view One Match brochure with more details.
Friday, November 2nd, 2012
Bruce Crozier Bill 80 November Bone Marrow Awareness Month
It was a very emotional day for us when our friend, the late MPP Bruce Crozier succeeded in making November "Bone Marrow Awareness Month" in the province of Ontario. Here is a clip of the historic event we witnessed first-hand in Queen's Park.
Friday, October 26th, 2012
OneMatch University of Windsor Swab Event
Click Here to View Full Size Flyer
Get Swabbed!
November 1, 2012 - Thursday
University of Windsor 3 Campuses
CAW Student Centre, Toldo Building West Lobby and St Denis Centre - 10am to 6pm
Special Need for Registrants Who Are:
- 17 to 35 year old males who are ethnically diverse;
- in good general health; and,
- willing to donate to any patient in need.
You can join OneMatch at www.onematch.ca
Monday, October 15th, 2012
OneMatch Registration in Honour of Manjot
Click Here to View Full Size Flyer
Sikh Cultural Society of Metropolitan Windsor
7955 County Road 42, Maidstone ON
Sunday, October 21
12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Special Need for Registrants Who Are:
- Ethnically diverse males between 17 and 35 years of age;
- In good general health; and,
- Willing to donate to any patient in need.
You can join OneMatch at www.onematch.ca
Monday, June 18th, 2012
Get Swabbed! In Honour of Pamela
Click Here to View Full Size Flyer
Get Swabbed! In honour of Pamela, a local woman who is in urgent need of a life saving Stem Cell/Bone Marrow transplant.
Hosted by the Katelyn Bedard Bone Marrow Association, you can register as a potential donor on Saturday, June 23 1pm-5pm at the Atkinson Memorial Centre 4270 Alice Street, ( Alice & Bernard Rd) Windsor.
Registrants aged 17-50 are welcome however their is an urgent, specific need for optimal donors who are Males aged 17-35 and who are ethnically diverse.
In just 5 minutes you could save a life!
Chatham-Kent Get Swabbed Event
Gabriela Deryck of Chatham was among the approximately 40 people who took part in the Get Swabbed event at the John D. Bradley Convention Centre on June 2. Held as a function of the Welcome Home Chatham-Kent weekend, the goal was to find matching donors for cancer victims in need of a blood stem cell or bone marrow transplant.
- Read the full story by Don Robinet, at the Chatham This Week website.
Thursday, June 7th, 2012
What kinds of donors are needed?
Right now there is a special need for ethnic males aged 17 to 35.
If you are healthy, between the ages of 17 and 50, and are willing to donate stem cells to anyone in need, you may be able to help. The genetic markers used to match donors to patients occur with different frequencies in different ethnic groups. For this reason, a person's best chance of finding a matching donor is within his or her own ethnic group. Therefore, donors from as many ethnic communities as possible are needed to enhance the database so it has a broad ethnic representation that reflects the needs of all Canadian patients.
While OneMatch has made advances in attracting more ethnically-diverse registrants, there is still room to grow. As of October 2008, 83 per cent of Canada's Network is Caucasian and the remaining 17 per cent is of various ethnic backgrounds. Yet one in five Canadians identifies themselves as foreign born according to the 2006 Census.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
Why Patients Need an “Optimal” Donor Base in Canada
As the future of stem cell transplantation gets brighter, the demand for quality stem cell products continues to grow. To keep pace with this demand and to ensure the best possible donors for our Canadian patients and those around the world, OneMatch continues with its pursuit to create the optimal donor base.
Through consultations with partners and the transplant community, we recognize that young, male and ethnically diverse donors are most often the optimal donor for patients in need. Young male donors often provide good results for patients post-transplant by reducing chances of graft-versus-host disease. As a result, starting in 2012 OneMatch will focus its recruitment efforts on ethnically diverse men between the ages of 17 and 35.
Knowing young men are most likely to be the choice donor, developing the optimal donor base is especially significant in Canada. Recent statistics paint a clear picture of the need:
- The OneMatch Network has 309,000 searchable registrants;
- Only 31 per cent of the Network is under 36 years old and only 10 per cent are males under the age of 36; and
- Of this 10 per cent, only 4 per cent are from different ethnic backgrounds.
At any given time we must provide the more than 950 Canadian patients waiting for their “one match” with a better chance of finding their donor.
Community education and outreach is the first step to raising awareness and recruitment. For example, university students across Canada contributed to OneMatch with its third annual Get Swabbed! University Challenge. Twenty campuses from coast to coast organized stem cell registration drives focusing on getting more young men to join the registry. Students continue to embrace the recruitment challenge as an effective and engaging way to give back. Queens University is one of the many examples of how raising awareness can benefit recruitment. Students at the university registered young men and educated the young women on the need for male donors. In turn, young women recruited male students to register in their place, or made appointments to donate blood and help patients in need of blood products. The stories from other participating universities are similar. Together the 20 participating schools provided an influx of 7,578 new registrants, 3824 (or 53 per cent) of whom are young, ethnically diverse male donors, all with the potential to help patients in need for many years to come.
Taking this direction in all future recruitment efforts, OneMatch will be on track to creating the optimal registry of Canadian donors for all our patients.
Wednesday, March 28th 2012
Thank You St. Clair College Students
Tuesday, March 27th, 146 students from St. Clair College swabbed their cheeks to save lives.
Photograph by: Tyler Brownbridge, The Windsor Star
Tuesday, March 13th 2012
Get Swabbed Event
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
St. Clair College
Centre for Applied Health
Sciences & Main Campus
Multi Purpose Room
In just 5 minutes, you could change a life forever.
Currently more than 900 patients are looking for a match in Canada. You could be that match.
You can be the one match to save a life.
Special Specific Need For:
- 17 to 35 year old males who are ethnically diverse;
- in good general health; and,
- willing to donate to any patient in need
Vist www.facebook.com/onematch for more details or download the poster.
Monday, March 5th 2012
Bone Marrow Donor, Survivor Meet for First Time
Get ready to cry! This story was made possible by those inspired by Katie. A bone marrow drive held by Katie's cousin in her honour led to this match. We have always said that if we only help one person then all our efforts were worthwhile. By why stop now? Let's keep it up and save more lives!
- Read the full story at fayetteville.11alive.com
Tuesday, January 24th 2012
OneMatch Recipient Story - Dr. Abhijit Guha
This is Dr. Guha's story. Dr. Guha was the driving force behind increased South Asian participation in blood and stem cell donation. Sadly, he lost his battle with leukemia on Tuesday, November 8, 2011. Dr. Guha was a respected community leader who fought courageously through his personal fight with leukemia to encourage all Canadian South Asians to make stem cell and blood donation a part of their civic responsibilities for all patients.
Tecumseh, Ontario Man Seeks Donor
A 54-year-old Tecumseh man finally celebrated Christmas with his family Saturday.
Ever since he was diagnosed last September with multiple myeloma - a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow - Jim Beneteau found his life reduced to a "slow pace" spiked with anxiety.
- Read the full story at The Windsor Star.