SIOUX CITY | Every four minutes a person in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

Samie DuVall and Zach Torgerson took the first step Wednesday at Morngside College's Olsen Student Center in potentially becoming the bone marrow donors who could cure them.

During the third annual bone marrow donor drive the students brushed the insides of their mouths with cotton swabs that were labeled and then sealed in an envelop.

DuVall, a freshman biology major from Audubon, Iowa, said a boy she knows who recently received a bone marrow transplant inspired her to join the national Be The Match Registry.

"Someone donated for him, so I thought I could do the same for someone else," she said. "A little bit of pain for me for a couple days to save someone else's life wouldn't be a problem at all."

Thousands of patients with life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia and lymphoma, need a transplant from an unrelated donor to replace bone marrow -- fatty tissue inside bones -- that has been damaged or destroyed by chemotherapy and/or radiation. They depend on Be The Match Registry, the world's largest hematopoietic cell registry, to find a match.

Three years ago, Carol Garvey, director of student health services at Morningside, said the college started the drive for people ages 18-44, who make up 90 percent of bone marrow donors.

"I had a co-worker who had leukemia, so we kind of got involved with her, but I also found out that this age group is most likely to be a match," she said. "I realized we were sitting on a gold mine if people were willing to participate."

During the first two drives at Morningside, Garvey said 178 people filled out paperwork and swabbed four different spots in their mouths to collect cells for tissue typing. Two of the participants, she said, were called back for blood testing, although they turned out not to be a close genetic match.

"These swabs are what we send to be processed and that goes into that Be The Match Registry," she explained. "I would say it's working."

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Morningside students participate in 3rd annual bone marrow donor drive

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