Save from leukemia
The chromosome substitutes a shoulder
Victoria Ivleva, portal "Such Things"
If we do not help, many cancer patients will find themselves without a chance to survive: the state has never funded the work of hospital laboratories in full.
The main thing that everyone who is affected by this should know is that acute leukemia will be defeated and we will win absolutely, but it is impossible to do this with the funds allocated by the state. The state cunningly pretends that it does not know this, and continues to finance only individual pieces of the huge process. In some cases, the only way to save is bone marrow transplantation (TCM), and it seems to me that everything connected with TCM is an absolute triumph of science and its full internationalization. The AdVita Foundation from St. Petersburg is one of those who helps science to triumph, and people to recover and return to normal life. "I believe that we are human rights defenders," says Elena Gracheva, AdVita's administrative director. "We are defending the human right to have access to a chance to survive."
The chance to survive begins with the search for a donor, and the state does not intend to pay for this search, the search bill is a modest 18 thousand euros – the patient must contrive and find himself. A crazy, aortic rupture begins, the running around of relatives of a dying person in search of money, funds and sponsors. The state does not notice all this point–blank and continues to behave as if donors are standing on every corner and begging to take bone marrow from them...Of course, if there is a donor in Russia, the cost drops sharply, but their number is ridiculously small - only 35 thousand people. In Germany, for comparison, six million.
And there are only three clinics that do TCM. And only in one of them – to all patients, regardless of age. This is the R. M. Gorbacheva Research Institute of Pediatric Oncology, Hematology and Transplantology in St. Petersburg. It is he who is being helped by the AdVita Foundation.
Externally, the search for a donor looks very simple: a doctor enters the international Registry on the Internet (this is a world database containing the data of 22 million bone marrow donors), enters the necessary parameters, and the computer immediately shows in which country the potential savior of someone's life lives. In general, the Register is such a fantastic international of science, it gives an incredible sense of the unity of the world. Here is an example: a resident of Kazakhstan was approached by the bone marrow of only one person. And this man lived in Australia. In general, on the same planet. The main thing is that he was in the Register. And the Kazakh was saved.
In my presence, too, the data of one patient was entered like this – it turned out that six strangers can help him – in the USA, Portugal, Brazil, Germany, France and Cyprus!
But this is only the first step. Each of these six must be physically found (and many donated blood several years ago), make sure that they still want to help, completely protype, that is, look at tissue compatibility with the patient (and this is a combination of 10 four-digit numbers), deliver the donor to the clinic, take his bone marrow and send it to the recipient.
The state does not intend to spend its funds on all this.
It turns out that in Russia many people die from leukemia not because the disease is incurable, but because there is no money even for the very first step. "Of course, there could be much more donors from Russia, but we do not have any educational work on this topic at the state level, only foundations do everything," explains Elena Gracheva. – What can I say, if the majority of people still confuse the bone marrow with the spinal cord ...".
Surprisingly, another common misconception is that bone marrow transplantation is incredibly painful, extremely harmful to the donor and occurs with the obligatory participation of a surgical saw – in general, you will remain disabled. In fact, this is absolutely not the case.
There are two ways to take bone marrow: a short surgical intervention (puncture of the iliac bone) or a three-hour sampling of cells on a blood separator, during which it is run through a centrifuge. Bone marrow is a fluid that looks almost indistinguishable from blood, it's just that most of it is in the bone cavity, hence the name. The beauty and value of the bone marrow is that only hematopoietic (stem) cells are located in it. Here they are, these cells with a romantic name, and give rise to all the other blood cells. The rotation speed of the centrifuge is designed in such a way as to allow separating hematopoietic cells from others and taking only them.
I saw the bone marrow being taken away on a separator, and then, just a couple of hours later, I watched the reddish-brown liquid slowly flow into the recipient's vein, restoring him to life.
That was happiness. It's almost like having a baby.
What is behind these two events? Teamwork of doctors from various laboratories of the R. M. Gorbacheva DOGiT Research Institute. A job that few people know about, and the indispensability of which few people, except specialists, represent.
For example, right after the bone marrow is taken, now called a transplant, it enters the cryopreservation laboratory. They count the number of stem cells – the success of transplantation largely depends on this. But you can see these cells only with the help of special reagents – monoclonal antibodies (MOT), which are also needed when making a diagnosis, since they allow doctors to recognize whether the cell in front of them is healthy or sick. One bottle of MOT costs at least 30 thousand rubles, but at least ten tests are required for accurate diagnosis. The state has never fully funded these studies.
The name of another laboratory speaks for itself – transplantology and molecular hematology. Here, studies are performed that help to make a prognosis of the disease and evaluate the effectiveness of therapy. That is, here they look not only at how the tumor goes away, but also how the donor material is engrafted, how healthy donor cells displace patients – and this happens differently in each case.
"We are investigating genetic breakdowns characteristic of most oncological diseases," explains Ildar Barkhatov, Candidate of Medical Sciences and head of the laboratory. – And with modern treatment methods, we can prescribe highly effective targeted therapy (from the English word target – “goal”, approx. "Such things"), which will affect exclusively tumor cells without affecting healthy ones." And he adds in such a meaningless voice: "We can identify one sick cell out of ten thousand."
Incredible cosmic precision!
In 2014, 8,864 studies were performed in the Laboratory of Transplantology and Molecular Hematology. Most of them were financed by the AdVita Foundation. The state has also added something, but somehow very delicately.
The sixth chromosome is such a small stick-a little hair with a coquettishly intercepted belt with an inflated waist. Small, of course, it is wrong to say. That's right – invisible, about six hundred times smaller than an ant. Well, the average ant is about six hundred times smaller than a human. Presented? Excellent. So, the part of the chromosome above the inflated waist is called the short shoulder. In this very shoulder are the genes that are responsible for the compatibility of cells during bone marrow transplantation. To everyone who was cured of leukemia by transplantation, the sixth chromosome was given a shoulder. I like it when a chromosome puts a shoulder to a person.
Probably the most long-awaited shoulder in a lifetime.
Anyone who has ever tried to raise funds for charity will say with confidence that they are most willing to help children (even more willing to help girls with blue eyes and blonde hair). For test tubes, laboratory tests and other boring stuff, people do not want to give. My friends! Test tubes are saved lives, not suspended research and not even flights into space. If there is a test tube, there will be a person! This should be very clearly understood in connection with bone marrow transplantation. Without tests, doctors turn into blind people and grope.
The scientific world is one and extraordinarily harmonious. Alas, it depends not only on the flight of thought, but also on money. It seems to everyone that the state should give for test tubes. Of course it should. But it does not give or does not give in full. Just accept it as a fact. And if we don't help AdVita, then nothing will save either the little blonde girl or many, many more people.
And if someone contemptuously says "test tubes", don't believe it! Don't believe it for anything! Test tubes are life. No TCM is done without test tubes. Not a single patient recovered without their participation.
PS. Becoming a bone marrow donor is not difficult at all. To begin with, you just need to donate 20 milliliters of blood. All the details can be found here. You just want to!
I remind you that bone marrow donation is free, anonymous and voluntary all over the world. And so it will always be.
Yes, here's another thing. Do you know what the boy called his donor, who was injected with bone marrow in my presence and brought back to life? He called him "bro"!
That's it.
PPS. Monologue of the recipient's mother."When my son was diagnosed for the first time, I physically felt that my life was over, I stopped living.
I need to eat – my stomach demanded it, not I, I need to sleep – my body asked. I came to my son in the hospital – I smiled, of course, and I go home from him - tears flow like a river. Not to be stopped. I lived without any hope, I felt worse than he did, because I was told more than he was, and I understood what could be ahead. Then everything seemed to work out, there was a remission. And suddenly – a relapse. We were immediately warned that the treatment would be very serious, there was a transplant ahead. It was even worse for me than the first time. After all, now there are additional obstacles on the way to recovery: will chemotherapy help or not, will there be a donor, will we find funds for it, and will they take us to the clinic. Failure at any of the stages is the end. And time was working against us. There was such confusion – words cannot describe. There is no life further. It's over.
At home, we had a family council – my sister, my son's girlfriend and her parents came. And they offered to make a support group "Vkontakte". And I didn't even understand what it was about, I was stuck in the Soviet Union, but, of course, I grasped at this straw. Well, my sister and I plastered our whole small town up and down with ads with a cry for help.
How many people responded! An unknown woman called, she had a daughter with Down syndrome, offered 20 thousand. I say: "What are you, you have a sick child of your own," and she replied: "My child can't be saved anymore, let him help yours." We also went to all sorts of rich organizations – but only the rich, mostly, were not allowed on the threshold. Gazprom, I remember, said they were insolvent, but a huge number of completely unknown citizens supported us with small sums. And it turns out, who did not collect the money, dies… I can't believe it in any way…
We found a donor a month later – it was such an incredible miracle! And even in Russia!
From time to time, all sorts of stupid thoughts come into his head – suddenly his blood type will change when a part of another person passes to him, will I still be his mother, or will he be kind of not mine anymore… Of course, I drive away these thoughts, but they still climb..."
She sat silently in a chair in the corner of the ward, dressed in a red robe and mask, during the entire transplant, and when it was over, she busily approached her son and began to measure his blood pressure.
It was normal.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
19.06.2015