WELCOME TO BECOME MY HERO - DO YOU NEED A STEM CELL DONOR?

If you or someone you know has a disease such as leukemia, sickle cell anemia, multiple sclerosis or lupus, we want to help.

More specifically, if a bone marrow transplant is needed to treat your disease but you can't find a suitable match in a donor registry, you have come to the right place.

Become My Hero finds cord blood donors for anyone in imminent danger of dying because they need a bone marrow transplant to survive but can't find a donor. We also help those currently in remission and would like to have at least two cord blood units to set aside in case of a relapse. This is especially important for those who are in remission who do not have a donor in a registry or for those who had a difficult time finding a donor for their first transplant.

We differ from organizations such as the NMDP (National Marrow Donor Program) and DKMS (German National Donor Program) in that we are not a public registry. We, instead, take extraordinary measures to find donors for individuals who have not been able to find a match in a public registry. Most importantly, we almost exclusively look for cord blood and not bone marrow donors.

Cord blood is obtained from the umbilical cord that links a mother and child. The blood present in the umbilical cord is a rich source of the same stem cells found in bone marrow. Partially matched cord blood stem cells from an unrelated donor, however, offer the advantage of usually not causing the life-threatening "graft versus host" responses that frequently occur when partially matched, unrelated, bone marrow stem cells are used for a transplant. That means your chance of surviving a transplant and, therefore, your disease is much, much greater.

Cord blood stem cells are now being used to treat more than 80 medical conditions and diseases.