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Finding a Matched Donor
The stem cells may come from a brother, sister, cousin, parent, an unrelated individual who has been matched to you, or from yourself. If you are having an autologous transplant, you will receive your own stem cells. If you are having an allogeneic transplant, you will receive matched stem cells from someone else. To be considered a match, the donor must share your tissue type. Because we inherit our tissue type, like we inherit our eye color or height, each of our siblings has a one-in-four chance of matching us. Parents, offspring, aunts, uncles, and cousins rarely are well enough matched to be a donor for an adult recipient. When a sibling is not available to be a donor and stem cells from a healthy donor is required, a matched unrelated donor search will be initiated. The chances of any two unrelated people sharing the same tissue type are between 1-in-100 to greater than 1-in-5 million. Worldwide, more than 6 million volunteers are registered as stem cell donors. Once a donor is identified, a very detailed set of guidelines must be followed to insure that the donor is fully counseled, able to provide informed consent, and medically suited to proceed.
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