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Hope for cancer patients without a bone marrow match

450 views · Published 8 August 2014 · 2:10 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: KUTV 2 News Salt Lake City · 2014 · News & Politics

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(KUTV) - For the last 8 years, Will Clark has seen the ugly side of cancer. 

In 2006, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Doctors first tried surgery and a wait-and-see approach. However, the cancer started to spread. Will underwent what would be his first round of chemotherapy. 

"They say this would keep it (cancer) away for at least 25 years," said Will.

The cancer would return 8 months later. He then had another round of chemotherapy, but that treatment failed. Will's cancer fight would then spill over into years. Despite chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer would not go away and his doctors were running out of options. 

"The doctor told me that at this rate, you are not going to see your 53rd birthday," Will said.

There was one possible option for Will, a bone marrow transplant. At the time, he did not have a 100 percent match for a donation. However, doctors at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City told Will that he could still get what's called a Haploidentical Transplant. Here, doctors can use bone marrow from someone who is the closest match to help destroy the cancer cells. 

"What it means is if a patient needs a transplant, they will often always have a donor," said Dr. Finn Peterson, Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant and Acute Leukemia Program at LDS Hospital.

Peterson says this transplant can give people like Will, hope. He says conventional treatments will be tried first but if those treatments fail, the patients will be sent to LDS Hospital. 

"It is an exciting new technology because in the past, if patients didn't have a donor, we were stuck and we had to accept that these patients were going to die from their cancer. Now, we can always find a donor," said Peterson.

LDS Hospital started doing the Haploidentical Transplant about two years ago. Doctors tell us they are seeing success with their patients.

(Copyright 2014 Sinclair Broadcast Group)

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