Marrow

New York Mets bench coach Don Baylor has the same type of bone-marrow cancer that New York Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre was diagnosed with three years ago. After a spring-training physical examination last month, a bone-marrow test in New York on March 12 revealed that Baylor had multiple myeloma, the Mets said. Baylor, 53, will receive four consecutive days of oral and intravenous chemotherapy during the Mets' first regular-season homestand, which begins March 31 against the Chicago Cubs.

Upper Merion Township will host testing for a bone-marrow-donor program March 13 as part of a national effort to increase the donor pool. The Fanconi Anemia Research Foundation, a co-sponsor of the event, is trying to boost the list of possible donors across the country this year by 200,000, to raise the total to one million, said foundation president Michael Greenberg. Greenberg showed a video to the township supervisors last Thursday detailing the process the donor and recipient must go through.

Taking a page from Mark Twain and showing that his sense of humor is very much intact, Jim Fenerty, waiting Thursday afternoon for doctors to release him from Abington Memorial Hospital, said, "The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. " Fenerty, athletic director and boys' basketball coach at Germantown Academy, fell ill Tuesday morning while teaching a senior-level course on civil liberties. One of his students is his daughter, Erin. "My right hand went numb, then part of my face did the same," he said.

As Andy Talley says, other schools have their Matt Szczurs. In November 2009, Rowan defensive end Matt Hoffman donated his marrow. In April, it was Rhode Island offensive lineman Matt Greenhalgh's turn. Ditto Ursinus running back Teddy Conrad. A month later, Penn added two more to the expanding list: tight end Robert Gawlas and defensive back J.P. Grant. Soon, so will West Chester, thanks to linebacker Jared Bonacquisti and offensive lineman Dom Dovidio. Lehigh linebacker Mike Groome is also about to give the gift.

John Bucci Jr. has gone home cancer free, and he plans to cook a steak. Bucci, the owner and griddle master of John's Roast Pork in Philadelphia, was released from Jeanes Hospital on Monday evening after a successful bone-marrow transplant to cure his pre-leukemia. "John has had an unusually benign course for a healthy donor-transplant recipient so far," said his doctor, Thomas Klumpp, assistant director of the Fox Chase Temple Bone Marrow Transplant Program. In an e-mailed note, Klumpp emphasized "so far," because even a successful bone-marrow transplant from a donor carries significant long-term risks, including sometimes fatal graft-versus-host disease, or a relapse of cancer.

Two months ago, she didn't know whether she would even get the bone-marrow transplant doctors said could cure her of leukemia. Yesterday afternoon, Dot Wohler came home from the hospital - just four weeks after doctors wheeled her weakened body into the transplant unit at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia and dripped pints of her brother's marrow into her body. Just one month after she checked in and started a weeklong regimen of chemotherapy that destroyed her bone marrow, the blood-like liquid that produces white blood cells, platelets and hemoglobin.

The football season doesn't start for five months, but Villanova coach Andy Talley already is looking for blood. For the fourth time in three years, Talley is spearheading an on-campus blood drive for the national bone-marrow donor program. His efforts have added more than 2,000 names to the computer files, which are monitored by the Human Leukocyte Antigen Registry Foundation. Sunday, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., the football program, in conjunction with the university's Alumni Assocation, will hold another testing at Jake Nevin Fieldhouse.

A Pittsburgh hospital yesterday became the first in the world to offer new parents the chance to buy a controversial form of "biological insurance" for their baby. For $1,500, parents who deliver at Magee-Womens Hospital now can have the blood from their newborn's umbilical cord and placenta frozen for at least a decade and possibly much longer. In the future, the blood, which is rich in blood-forming "stem" cells, may be used in the same child or in a sibling for gene therapy or to replenish blood ravaged by chemotherapy or radiation.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE Was Einstein right? It's been 75 years since Albert Einstein formulated his theory of general relativity and scientists are still asking that question. The answer is yes - for now, says a Washington University physicist. "Although it is remarkable that this theory, born 75 years ago out of almost pure thought, has managed to survive every test, the possibility of suddenly finding a discrepancy will continue to drive experiments for years to come," Clifford M. Will reports in Science magazine.

Consumers have a bone to pick with the U.S. Department of Agriculture - literally. After a 12-year fight, the department appears ready to accede to the requests of meat processors to be allowed to include ground bone in their products without clearly informing the public on the label. Currently, so-called mechanically separated meat - which contains meat, bone, cartilage and marrow - must be identified as being among the ingredients of processed foods such as hot dogs, sausage and bologna.

SAVING LIVES. That's the mission. And the reason Villanova's longtime football coach is so passionate about his Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, whose goal is to continue adding potential donors to the national "Be the Match" registry. The more people who become part of the pool means that many more victims of blood-related diseases have a chance of getting help. It's that simple. In just the last year, through testings at Villanova and the other 34 schools Talley works with, 35 football players donated marrow.

Taking a page from Mark Twain and showing that his sense of humor is very much intact, Jim Fenerty, waiting Thursday afternoon for doctors to release him from Abington Memorial Hospital, said, "The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. " Fenerty, athletic director and boys' basketball coach at Germantown Academy, fell ill Tuesday morning while teaching a senior-level course on civil liberties. One of his students is his daughter, Erin. "My right hand went numb, then part of my face did the same," he said.

NEWARK, N.J. - Federal officials will provide a humanitarian visa so a 5-year-old New Jersey girl can get a lifesaving bone-marrow transplant from her Salvadoran sister. The decision, announced Friday night by U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), means U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will allow 7-year-old Gisselle Bonilla Ramirez to come to the United States to donate marrow to her sister, Yarelis Bonilla. The younger girl, a U.S. citizen, is undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia.

A rare type of bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis required a complicated transplant - at least until Wednesday, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its-kind, twice-a-day pill made by the Wilmington-based pharmaceutical company Incyte. The brand name of the medicine is Jakafi. "It's a singularly exciting day," Incyte president Paul Friedman said. "Most biotechs never make it this far. We discovered this molecule and took it all the way through development and are about to start selling it. And this is not a me-too drug.

The theme from Rocky blared as I stretched with scores of others preparing for this year's Broad Street Run. It evoked thoughts of another fighter, Philly-born jazz tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, whose battle with leukemia had much to do with why I could survive the same disease and travel from western Massachusetts to join 30,000 runners this spring. Brecker - an elite jazz improviser and New York studio musician - died four years ago after he failed to find a match for a bone marrow transplant.

As Andy Talley says, other schools have their Matt Szczurs. In November 2009, Rowan defensive end Matt Hoffman donated his marrow. In April, it was Rhode Island offensive lineman Matt Greenhalgh's turn. Ditto Ursinus running back Teddy Conrad. A month later, Penn added two more to the expanding list: tight end Robert Gawlas and defensive back J.P. Grant. Soon, so will West Chester, thanks to linebacker Jared Bonacquisti and offensive lineman Dom Dovidio. Lehigh linebacker Mike Groome is also about to give the gift.

IT STARTED BY chance. One morning 2 decades ago, Villanova football coach Andy Talley was shaving and happened to turn on the radio. Who could have known? "I'm listening to one of those medical talk shows, and an oncologist comes on and he's talking about bone-marrow transplants," Talley remembered. "And he says, 'We have no donors. People by the thousands are dying of blood-related cancer diseases, and we just don't have any donors.' It wasn't on my radar at all. All of a sudden I had a lightbulb moment.

About a decade ago, when he was a student at the University of Florida, Marshal Davis made a spur-of-the-moment gesture during a campus drive for bone-marrow donors. He got his cheek swabbed for a cell sample, signed some paperwork - and never gave it another thought. Until his cellphone rang on a summer day in 2009. The caller reminded Davis that he had registered as a potential donor years before. He barely remembered, but no matter. A 5-year-old boy in Chicago needed bone-marrow stem cells to fight off a disorder called myelodysplasia, often a precursor to leukemia.

Gov. Christie has signed legislation that seeks to increase bone marrow donations in New Jersey, particularly among minority residents. It honors a 3-year-old Atco boy who died of leukemia after a marrow match could not be found. The measure signed Wednesday directs the Health and Senior Services Department to prepare an online brochure with data from the National Marrow Donor Program to be posted on the department's website. Physicians will be encouraged to use it to inform patients about how they can become donors.

In 2007, 3-year-old Jaden Hilton of Atco lost his battle with leukemia. He needed a bone-marrow transfer to survive, but relatives were not a match. Because of the scarcity of registered donors for minorities, he died. But his life and death will soon be a saving grace for others in need of marrow donations, said Shana Melius, cofounder of Preserve Our Legacy Inc., a nonprofit established in Jaden's memory to raise awareness of the need for registered donors. "Jaden didn't die in vain," said Melius, who met the Hilton family at an event for DKMS, which bills itself as the world's largest bone-marrow donor center.