Bone marrow drive aims to help 6 kids

By Jeremy Twitchell

Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008 | 12:57 p.m.

The Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation and Green Valley-based Zappos online shoe retailer are joining for a bone marrow drive, hoping to find matches for six Southern Nevada children who are in need of life-saving transplants.

On Friday and Saturday, they will set up testing sites around the Las Vegas Valley to recruit people to the National Bone Marrow Registry, the catalog of tissue types that doctors use to find tissue matches for patients with lymphoma, leukemia or other diseases that can be fought only with a marrow transplant.

"It's kind of the last line of defense for these kids," Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation President and CEO Jeff Gordon said. "When it comes down to a bone marrow transplant, you're talking about life and death. That's as plainly as I can put it."

Gordon said the test is simple and non-binding. It consists of a cotton swab run inside the cheek. The rest is done in a lab.

Once the donor's tissue type is determined, he or she will be added to the registry and notified if a matching patient ever needs marrow. No one on the registry is required to help if a match is found.

Even though there are millions of donors on the registry, the intricate nature of bone marrow tissue requires an exact match, and many patients who need a transplant are unable to find a matching donor on the registry, according to the National Marrow Donor Program, which runs the registry.

Gordon said this is the third year of the drive. He said last year's drive added 400 names to the national registry. The goal for this year is 600.

"Last year, we found two bone marrow donors for our kids in Las Vegas who normally wouldn't have come out," he said.

Gordon said the registry is in particular need of donors of Asian, Hispanic and African American descent. He said the first place doctors look when a patient needs a transplant is in the patient's family, but people of those ethnicities rarely find a match within their family. However, they are much more likely to find a match from someone of the same ethnicity, according to the National Bone Marrow Donor Program.

"We really, really need their help," Gordon said.

Normally, there is a cost of $52 for the testing to join the registry. However, Gordon said, Zappos will be funding all of the testing and there will be no cost to anyone who comes to the drive.

"Zappos has come through in a big way to sponsor this event. … That adds up to a lot of dollars," Gordon said.

Jamie Naughton, assistant cruise ship manager at Zappos, said the company partnered with the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation about a year and a half ago. Though Zappos employees have helped the foundation on several other projects, this will be their first bone marrow drive.

Naughton said employees chose to work with the foundation from a list of several local charities.

"We put it out to a vote of our employees and the overwhelming majority came back in favor of supporting the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation," she said.

During the week, employees are forgoing the free lunch that Zappos provides each day, and Zappos will be using the money that would have gone toward food to give to the foundation on behalf of the employees.

Zappos is also using its headquarters and two of its outlet stores for the drive.

"The goal of the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation is to get 600 donors, and we're hoping that a few hundred of those will be our employees," Naughton said.

Jeremy Twitchell is a reporter for the Home News. He can be reached at 990-8928 or [email protected].