Allograft Possibilities

Upstate New York Transplant Services is getting creative with its latest blood drive. In conjunction with the release of the wildly popular, vampire-themed Twilight movies, the organ procurement organization is holding a blood drive at a mall in Buffalo. Inspired by other successful Twilight-themed blood drives across the country, organizers hope to tap into the massive crowds expected to attend the premiere. Read more here.

For years, people suffering from debilitating lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have had to deal with the possibility of a lung transplant. With growing transplant lists and the odds of matching a donor lung rare, those waiting for lung transplants have had to battle the odds for survival.

However, new research using stem cells to grow new lungs or lung tissue from the University of Texas Medical Branch may give hope to potential lung transplant recipients. Read more about the new research being tested on mice here.

Both donor families and organ tissue recipients have remarkable stories in the donation process, and we are passionate about highlighting those stories to bring better awareness to the cause of donation. We recently met an inspirational blogger who writes about his heart transplant at My Second Heartbeat. We encourage you to visit his blog to hear his brave, inspiring story.

Frank Bodino, President of Transplant Speakers International, called attention to the importance of tissue donation this week in the company’s newsletter.  The newsletter also features the moving story of Manuel Salazar, a quadruple amputee who received life-saving allografts from AlloSource. To read more about tissue donation and Manuel’s story, check out the newsletter here.

AlloSource was featured today on the Donate Life Illinois Blog. Check out the site to see some of the great things Donate Life Illinois and the Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donation Network are doing to improve the lives of donors, donor families and recipients.

A recent bill sponsored by New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky proposes that all New Yorkers be automatically registered as organ donors. Under the new bill, residents would have to actively opt-out of being an organ donor, with the hope that bill will increase the number of registered donors. Read more about the proposed bill here.

If passed, this law would be the first of its kind in the nation. What do you think about the opt-out bill?

We are pleased to congratulate tissue recipient May Chen on being named Tai Chi master of the Year 2010 by the 12th World Congress on Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Five years ago, we were fortunate to meet Chen,  an internationally recognized martial artist and Tai Chi instructor and a truly inspiring person.  Chen risked losing her career following a severe knee injury, but has experienced a remarkable recovery following a transplanted allograft from AlloSource. Chen has returned to martial arts competition with great success and has become a friendly advocate of tissue donation. (Chen represented AlloSource as a float rider aboard the 2009 Donate Life float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.)

Congrats, May!

National Donate Life Month is the perfect time to stop and think about the gift of organ and tissue donation and peruse the real-life stories of the people it touches every day. 

One man in St. Rockford, Illinois recently showed the boundless limits of human generosity by giving the ultimate gift of life: he decided to donate one of his kidneys to a cashier he hardly knew. Read their heartwarming story here.

National Donate Life Month

Reminder: April is National Donate Life Month. It is a great time to reflect on the miracles made possible here at AlloSource thanks to generous donors and their courageous families. Because of their decisions to register as donors, each day we are able to save and enhance the lives of patients in need: providing allograft skin to patients who are severely burned, generating fresh articular cartilage allografts to promote joint restoration for patients who have suffered disease or trauma, processing live cellular bone growth substitutes for patients with broken bones or spinal fusions, and so much more. 

Although still lesser understood than organ transplantation, approximately 1.5 million tissue transplants are performed each year. Celebrate this Donate Life Month by reading some of our touching stories of donor families and tissue recipients. Their chronicles truly bring to life the miraculous possibilities of tissue donation.

And please remember, if you’re not already a donor, register to become one. And pass the word on to your friends and families.

Sincerely,

Tom Cycyota

Ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors at AlloSource? Take a quick behind-the-scenes look at tissue banking R&D, with AlloSource Vice President of R&D, Simon Bogdansky.

A short tour of the leading laboratory where AlloSource develops new life-saving and life-enhancing tissue allografts

Discover the laboratory where AlloSource ensures the safety of its allografts

Take a look inside AlloSources cutting-edge stem cell laboratory, where the company is developing new types of allografts that promote tissue regeneration