Fordham Football Participates in “Be the Match” Registry

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Bronx, N.Y. (April 15, 2014) – For the second straight year, the Fordham University football squad assisted in helping donors register for the "Be the Match" bone marrow registry but this year the drive took on a new meaning as the Rams were doing it for one of their own.
 
Anthony Daniels, a 22-year old talented and hard-working Fordham student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma on December 22, 2011. Since that day, Daniels has continued his studies at Fordham's Gabelli School of Business while undergoing cancer treatments at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City. He needs an allogenic transplant which means that an outside donation of white blood cells is essential for his recovery. What makes the search more difficult is that Anthony's donor match will be rare because of his DNA markers. Due to the rareness of Anthony's white blood cells, increasing the sample size of potential donors is critical. And that's where the Rams came in.
 Greeting people at the door of the McGinley Center lobby, members of the football team encouraged their fellow students to register and walked them through the process.
 
Donors were also able to meet Anthony's parents, Lori and Kevin Daniels, who also helped out with the registration.
 
"This was a tremendous opportunity for the student-athletes to do something tangible for one of their fellow Fordham students," said assistant coach Ian Pace, the coordinator of the event for the football program. "The football student-athletes did a great job encouraging their classmates to register which made for a great turnout."
 
The Be The Match Registry is geared towards increasing the number of potential bone marrow donors. Participants completed a quick registration form and then submitted a swab of cheek cells using a cotton swab to determine tissue type.
 
Thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases depend on the Be The Match Registry to find a match, an unrelated donor who can help give then a second chance at life.
 
Be The Match Registry^® is the donor registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). They've been helping patients receive the transplants they need for more than 25 years.
 
Now, medical advances are making transplants available to more patients of all ages than ever before.
 
Be The Match^® was introduced in 2009 to meet this need by engaging a growing community of people inspired and committed to help patients in any way they can - by joining the registry, donating umbilical cord blood, contributing financially or getting involved.
 
The National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP), a nonprofit organization, is the global leader in providing bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants to patients in need.  As Be The Match^®, it operates the Be The Match Registry^®, the world's largest listing of potential marrow donors and donated cord blood units and raise funds to help provide transplants to all patients through the Be The Match Foundation^®. They also match patients with donors, educate health care professionals and conduct research through their research arm, the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research^® (CIBMTR), so more lives can be saved.