Last modified Thu., January 04, 2007 - 02:24 PM
Originally created Thursday, January 4, 2007

Navy Medicine Research Command's Bone Marrow Registry saves Lives

By MC1(AW/AW) Jeffrey McDowell, Navy Medicine Support Command

In 1986, the Navy began federal support for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). In 1990, the Department of Defense initiated the C. W. Bill Young/ DoD Marrow Donor Recruitment and Research Program to support volunteer donor recruitment for registration and transplant typing. To date, more than 26,000 marrow transplants have taken place, saving lives thanks to their anonymous volunteer donors.

Each year, more than 350 DoD volunteers contribute this precious gift in the hopes of saving the life of someone they will probably never meet.

The primary objective of this program is the development and application of unrelated donor marrow transplantation technology toward the military medical application for the rescue of casualties with marrow damage resulting from exposure to radiation or certain chemical warfare agents. This program also provides humanitarian support of patients every day, using transplant therapy to treat more than 70 different potentially fatal diseases. The only cure for many of these is the complete replacement of diseased marrow with that from a healthy donor.

Navy Medicine Research Command (NMRC) is a Navy medicine echelon 4 command under the cognizance of Navy Medicine Support Command, based at NAS Jacksonville, that shares administrative oversight of the NMDP with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Navy Medicine Research Command is also responsible for genetic typing of the marrow to determine as close a match as possible from the more than 400,000 DoD donors file. NMRC also leads the way in developing new methods of genetic typing.