�Friends of Brittany� Bone Marrow Drive
Hopes To Find Her Lifesaving Match

Saturday, January 4, 2014

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ROCHELLE PARK, NJ - A Friends of Brittany bone marrow drive is being hosted in partnership with The HLA Registry at Community Blood Services to register potential bone marrow donors to the national Be The Match Registry in hopes of finding a match for Brittany and other patients like her who need life-giving stem cell transplants.

The drive will be held Saturday, January 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Bergen County Harley-Davidson, 124 Essex Street in Rochelle Park.

Brittany Santana is a fun, bright and beautiful 15-year-old from Wood Ridge, New Jersey who needs a bone marrow stem cell transplant to cure her acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Diagnosed two years ago at age 13, Brittany went into remission after four rounds of chemotherapy. But just a year later in November her cancer returned. Brittany is currently receiving more chemotherapy but now must find a match so she can have a lifesaving transplant.

The public is urged to stop by the drive and spend 10 minutes registering to join the national Be the Match bone marrow registry through The HLA Registry by getting a simple cheek swab and filling out a short health form. To register at this drive on Saturday, you must be 18-44 years of age, willing to donate for any patient in the world and meet the health guidelines.

Every day, thousands of adults and children like Brittany are diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia and other serious diseases that require stem cell transplants as a cure. Like Brittany, 70 percent of those patients will not find matches within their own families and must turn to the national registry to find a donor match.

Rich Croland, director of marketing and promotions at Harley Davidson, is working closely with the family to spread the word about the upcoming drive. For more information, call Patrice Foresman of The HLA Registry at 201-274-5381 or email her at [email protected].

You can also click here to register online at a virtual drive for Brittany at bethematch.org. Use promo code BrittanySantana. If you can�t register but wish to help in another way, you can help fund the family�s efforts by sending in a contribution to help defer the cost of adding new members to the registry. Every $100 raised helps add a member to the registry. A check can be made out to the Be The Match Registry and mailed to The HLA Registry, 102 Chestnut Ridge Road, Montvale, NJ 07645. Every $100 raised helps add a member to the registry.

Community Blood Services is celebrating 60 years of service in its community. In addition to housing The HLA Registry and New Jersey Cord Blood Bank, it provides blood and blood products to patients in more than 18 hospitals in New Jersey and New York State.

ABOUT THE HLA REGISTRY

The HLA Registry (HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, the genetic information encoded on white blood cells) at Community Blood Services is dedicated to finding compatible unrelated donors for lifesaving bone marrow transplants. A member of the NMDP based in Montvale (NJ), it is the largest non-governmental donor center in the U.S. and has registered more than 230,000 potential donors in the NMDP�s data base.