Jay Feinberg Lh.D, hc | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | Dickinson College |
| Occupation(s) | Bone Marrow Registry Founder and CEO |
| Board member of | Gift of Life Marrow Registry |
Jay Feinberg (born August 1968 in New York City) is a long-term leukemia survivor, community organizer and founder and current CEO of the Gift of Life Marrow Registry.
Raised in West Orange, New Jersey, [1] Feinberg graduated in 1986 from Saddle River Day School. [2] He was a 22-year-old foreign-exchange analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1991, just starting law school when he was diagnosed with leukemia and told that a bone marrow transplant was his only hope. [3] A matching donor was not found in Feinberg's immediate family. Knowing that tissue type is influenced by one's ethnic background - inherited like eye color, his friends and relatives widened their search to the unrelated population, focusing on increasing the representation of Ashkenazi Jews. [4]
Feinberg's plight, along with that of Mario Cooper, a graphic design artist, and Erskine Henderson, an attorney at Skadden Arps, was featured in a 1991 article in The New York Times . [1] Massive screenings were organized in Jewish communities throughout North America and Israel. In addition, screenings were held in Belarus (by Arnie Draiman and Bill Begal), Australia and South Africa. [5]
By 1995, more than 55,000 people had been tested. [6] Feinberg's condition was rapidly deteriorating and only a partial match had been found. A friend in Milwaukee organized one last drive and teenager Becky Faibisoff, a 16-year-old girl from Illinois, [3] was found to be a match. Feinberg received his successful transplant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. [7]
Feinberg's experience led him to devote his life to building a movement to educate and encourage people to add themselves to bone marrow registries around the world and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of donor Registry operations and strategy. The Gift of Life Marrow Registry, the Florida-based organization of which he is founder and CEO, [3] seeks to increase ethnic diversity in the global donor pool. Because tissue type is inherited, a patient's best chance of finding a genetic match lies with those of similar background. The recruitment model Feinberg created for increasing the representation of Jewish donors in the registry during his own donor search, has since been replicated to help increase representation of donors of African America, Hispanic, Asian and Native American backgrounds. [8]
Feinberg helped the organization to become a world leader in its field. [9]
In 2019, Feinberg led the establishment of the world's first registry-integrated stem cell collection center, based at Gift of Life's headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. There were two reasons for this new facility. First, Feinberg wanted to re-engineer the donor experience, providing apheresis services in a non-hospital setting that provided donors with all the amenities of a spa-like experience. Second, to expedite the time to transplant for patients, by limiting the collection center solely to peripheral blood stem cell collections for the registry.
Bone marrow is a semi-solid tissue found within the spongy portions of bones. In birds and mammals, bone marrow is the primary site of new blood cell production. It is composed of hematopoietic cells, marrow adipose tissue, and supportive stromal cells. In adult humans, bone marrow is primarily located in the ribs, vertebrae, sternum, and bones of the pelvis. Bone marrow comprises approximately 5% of total body mass in healthy adult humans, such that a man weighing 73 kg (161 lbs) will have around 3.7 kg (8 lbs) of bone marrow.
Charles Bronfman, is a Canadian-American businessman and philanthropist and is a member of the Canadian Jewish Bronfman family. With an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion in 2023, Bronfman was ranked by Forbes as the 1,217th wealthiest person in the world.
Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) is the transplantation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells, usually derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood, in order to replicate inside a patient and produce additional normal blood cells. HSCT may be autologous, syngeneic, or allogeneic.
Lambda Phi Epsilon is the largest Asian-American-Interest fraternity in North America. Lambda Phi Epsilon is affiliated with the National APIDA Panhellenic Association, and is a former member of the North American Interfraternity Conference.
Anthony Nolan is a UK charity that works in the areas of leukaemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. It manages and recruits donors to the Anthony Nolan Register, which is part of an aligned registry that also includes the Welsh Bone Marrow Donor Registry, NHS Blood and Transplant's British Bone Marrow Registry and Deutsche KnochenMarkSpenderdatei (DKMS) UK. This aligned register is known as the Anthony Nolan & NHS Stem Cell Registry. It also carries out research to help make bone marrow transplants more effective.
The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1987 and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that operates the Be The Match Registry of volunteer hematopoietic cell donors and umbilical cord blood units in the United States.
World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) is an organization based in Leiden, Netherlands, that coordinates the collection of the HLA phenotypes and other relevant data of volunteer hematopoietic cell donors and cord blood units across the globe.
Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) is a rare form of chronic leukemia that affects children, commonly those aged four and younger. The name JMML now encompasses all diagnoses formerly referred to as juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia (JCML), chronic myelomonocytic leukemia of infancy, and infantile monosomy 7 syndrome. The average age of patients at diagnosis is two (2) years old. The World Health Organization has included JMML as a subcategory of myelodysplastic and myeloproliferative disorders.
The Gift of Life Marrow Registry is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida that operates a public blood stem cell and bone marrow registry while facilitating transplants for children and adults battling life-threatening illnesses, including leukemia, lymphoma, other cancers and genetic diseases.
Georges Mathé was a French oncologist and immunologist. In November 1958, he performed the first successful allogeneic bone marrow transplant ever performed on unrelated human beings.
Mandi Jocelyn Schwartz was a Canadian ice hockey player with the Yale Bulldogs. She was a three time Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Hockey All-Academic, and played 73 consecutive games with the team before being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2008. Prior to joining Yale University, Schwartz had played minor hockey for Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan. Her younger brother, Jaden currently plays for the Seattle Kraken in the National Hockey League.
Ayelet Yakira Galena was born with a rare genetic disorder dyskeratosis congenita and was famous for the massive outpouring of support she attracted, including bone marrow drives that led to finding 162 lifesaving matches.
Janet Liang was a prominent health advocate and activist who advocated for ethnic minorities in the United States to join the national marrow registry, the National Marrow Donor Program. In 2011, she was selected as one of Asian Pacific Americans for Progress's Unsung Heroes. In 2012, Liang won the City of Pleasanton's 2012 Juanita Haugen Community of Character Awards.
Michelle Kim Maykin was a well-known figure in the Asian American community who promoted ethnic participation in the national marrow registry, the National Marrow Donor Program. Suffering from acute myeloid leukemia herself, she began a personal search for a bone marrow donor and began the internationally noted campaign, Project Michelle, which registered more than 18,000 people and led to bone marrow matches and donations for 62 different patients. Unable to find a match herself, she died on July 25, 2009.
Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei, abbreviated as DKMS, is an international nonprofit bone marrow donor center based in Tübingen, Germany, with entities in Chile, India, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. DKMS works in the areas of blood cancer and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and raises awareness of the need for donors for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation which people with blood cancers need for treatment as well as helping people sign up to their national bone marrow registries. Over the years, DKMS has expanded beyond Germany.
Amal Bishara is an Israeli Arab doctor, and the director of Bone Marrow Registry Outreach, Hadassah Medical Center, which is associated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. There she runs the only bone marrow transplant registry in the world for unrelated Arab donors. Dr. Amal has published and presented internationally on her research into immunogenetics. She serves on the Accreditation Committee of the European Federation for Immunogenetics.
DATRI is a not-for-profit organization registered in 2009 as a Section 8 company under Government of India. DATRI is one of the largest unrelated blood stem cell donors registry in India, that helps patients with blood cancer and other fatal blood disorders to find a HLA matched Blood Stem Cell donor. Blood stem cell transplant is a chance of cure for patients with blood cancer and other severe blood disorders. As of January 2023, DATRI has more than 5 lakhs voluntary donors registered and it has facilitated 1074 plus transplants worldwide. DATRI operates across India.
Stephen Rosner Bronfman is a Canadian businessperson, philanthropist, environmental activist and scion of the Bronfman family. He is the Chief Revenue Officer of the Liberal Party of Canada and a senior advisor to Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. He is also the last male Bronfman to have stayed in the family's ancestral city of Montreal.
African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust (ACLT) is an independent UK charity for people with leukaemia and other life-threatening disorders. The ACLT aims to raise awareness on stem cell, blood and organ donation in the UK, with a particular focus on black and mixed race communities.
Jennifer Jones Austin (néeJennifer Barkley Jones; born 1967 or 1968 is an American civil rights and social policy advocate and lawyer, author and talk show host, nonprofit CEO and executive, and former government official.
{{cite web}}: |first2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)