I learned yesterday that Dana Farber Cancer Institute has 42,000 thousand potential bone marrow stem cell donors registered at their donor center. That’s 14 times Mexico’s registry… They already have buccal swab tests available for HLA typing. That means that if you want to become a donor you just have to open your mouth for a moment and with a little brush cells are obtained for testing… The price for the buccal swab test is around $55 dollars per person.
They did a “Bermuda Outpost” a couple of years ago trying to find compatible donors for a patient for Bermuda and they are open to doing the same in other countries.
They estimate that there are more than 10 million stem cell donors and cord blood units available worldwide.
Here are the promotional materials:
