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Rutgers fraternity holds
bone-marrow donor drive
Published in the Home News Tribune 4/04/04
By RICK MALWITZ
STAFF WRITER
NEW BRUNSWICK: On Wednesday morning, 12-year-old Nicole Gioia of Wayne was
to meet the brothers of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at Rutgers
University. She was scouting out the location of a bone-marrow drive,
scheduled for this afternoon at the fraternity house on Union Street.
The trip from her home in Wayne would take an hour and a half. The morning
was damp and raw. Nicole, who is on a national registry for a bone-marrow
transplant, had a good excuse to cancel.
The night before, her temperature was 103.4 degrees, and her doctor wanted
to see her at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She
went, the fever settled down, but she did not get home until 11:30 p.m.
Yet, at 9 a.m. sharp, she and her parents, Rick and Denise Gioia, arrived at
the frat house, at a time when many of the brothers were still sleeping.
"She does everything to promote the transplant program," said her father.
As Gioia spoke with a reporter, his daughter, whose Web site (www.nicolegioia.org)
has pictures of her posing with actor Ben Affleck and ballplayer Derek
Jeter, was chatting and laughing with a huddle of fraternity brothers.
"If one person is healed because she came here to have her picture taken --
that's why this is all so worth it," said Gioia, whose daughter has been
fighting Hodgkin's lymphoma since discovering a painful lump on her neck on
the fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001.
While the cancer is in remission, Nicole will continue chemotherapy until at
least March 2005, unless a bone-marrow donor can be found and a successful
transplant operation is performed.
About 3,000 Americans are on a national registry of those who need a
replacement of bone marrow, which contains blood stem cells that form the
basis of the body's blood and immune systems.
The transplant requires a patient's diseased blood stem cells to be removed,
and replaced with healthy cells from a donor. Within a week or two, the
transplanted cells begin to reproduce normally, replacing the patient's
blood and immune system, and giving the patient the blood type of the donor.
The challenge is to find a perfect match of six specific genetic markers. In
only about one-quarter of the cases can a match be found within an immediate
family. In the other cases, the match comes from an anonymous donor, most
commonly one who shares similar ethnic backgrounds.
In 2000 Alana Shultz, then an art history major at Rutgers, learned of a
similar drive at the Rutgers Student Center. "I don't know what compelled me
to go," she recalled.
A match was found, and in February 2003 her blood was drawn during a two-day
stay at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Donors and recipients remain unknown to each other, unless both parties
consent. In Shultz's case, both parties consented, and in January she went
to Israel to meet the recipient -- a woman named Anat Biton, who celebrated
her 29th birthday the day the two met.
The donor process has become less burdensome in recent years. Marrow used to
be drawn from the hip, using lengthy needles. In many cases today, that
method is not necessary. Blood is drawn from one arm, filtered to remove
blood stem cells, and then the remaining blood is returned to the other arm.
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Because Shultz is a small woman
and veins in her arm were too small for the process, it was necessary to
draw blood from her jugular vein. Though she bears faint scars on her neck,
she said, "I would do it 100 times over."
Today's drive at Sigma Phi Epsilon will be supervised by the HLA Registry
Foundation of River Edge. HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, the
genetic information encoded on white blood cells.
The drive was organized by Jesse Hanna, a Rutgers University sophomore and
member of the fraternity. His brother Sean, a Piscataway High School senior,
was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma 10 years ago.
Sean, whose cancer is in remission, and his parents, Gil and Linda, met the
Gioia family at Sloan-Kettering in July 2002, when Sean and Nicole were
receiving chemotherapy treatments in the same room.
"Nicole had just relapsed, and
we were distraught," said Nicole's mother, Denise Gioia. "Sean was
wonderful. He comforted Nicole, and that day he became her hero."
On Nicole's Web site, Denise wrote of Gil and Linda Hanna: "They taught us
what it means to have faith and courage when we were convinced we had
neither."
"Jesse didn't pitch the idea (of a bone-marrow drive). He just announced
it," said Brian Dappolone of Cherry Hill, president of the fraternity.
Bone-marrow drives are typically organized in the name of an individual
needing a transplant. However, chances are against a volunteer donor having
the right genetic markers for a particular person in need.
An essential element is common ethnicity. When Shultz met Biton, they
learned that each other had common Eastern European Jewish roots, and found
they had similar body characteristics.
Sean Hanna's roots are mainly Palestinian Arab, with a little mixture of
Greek blood. Nicole's father has Italian roots, and her mother has a
combination of Italian and Russian roots.
"The most difficult matches are minorities. The most common are Caucasian,"
said Cheryl Papasso, recruitment coordinator for the HLA Registry.
Persons participating in the bone-marrow drive will be asked for a $30
donation to cover the cost of each test, though a donation is not necessary.
In addition to the bone-marrow drive, a more common blood drive will be
conducted by Community Blood Services.
A copy of the application donors will be asked to complete is on the HLA Web
site, www.hlaregistry.com, where it reports: "By registering you make
yourself available to help when needed . . . The chance of being called upon
to actually donate is close to zero. Very few people share your exact tissue
type."
However, when a successful match is made, said Shultz, "It is a
life-changing experience."
"I was the only person in the world who could have saved Anat's life," she
added.
Rick Malwitz(732) 565-7327;rmalwitz@thnt.com
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