Search on to find donor for Stanford professor

More than 80 people gave their samples to see if they could be potential donors for psychology professor Nalini Ambady, who has been looking for a match that could cure her leukaemia.

Her friends in Mumbai called upon Malayalis since there s a greater chance of finding match within a community of similar ethnicity. Their cheek swabs will now be sent to the US to see if they match professor s Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLAs), a vital parameter to carry out bone marrow transplant. One of her friends, Dilip D Souza, said, We had around 83 people signing up to be donors. Earlier, Ambady had found a donor through the city-based Marrow Donor Registry of India but the donor backed out citing family and health reasons.

The professor was diagnosed with leukaemia around eight years ago, which was cured. But the disease made a comeback last November after which an international search for a bone marrow donor was launched.

What is leukaemia?

When there is uncontrolled and/or abnormal growth of infection fighting white blood cells, it results in a type of cancer called leukaemia or commonly called blood cancer . Leukaemia is classified into Acute Lymphoblastic (ALL), Acute Myeloid (AML), Chronic Lymphoblastic (CLL) and Chronic Myeloid (CML). Acute leukaemia is an aggressive cancer which affects children and older people over 65 years or age whereas chronic leukaemia affects adults and takes months or even years to develop. Depending on the kind of cells that are affected, leukaemia is classified into myeloid and lymphoblastic .