Marshall University is no stranger to giving back to the community, but on April 8 and 9, students and staff had the opportunity to donate something that could save a life: their stem cells.
The university’s chapter of the National Marrow Donor Program hosted its first campus-wide live swab event in search of donors for stem-cell transplants of not only local but also international cancer patients.
At the event, participants were tasked with joining the international NMDP registry and swabbing each cheek for 15 seconds; the 30 seconds could potentially – about a one in a million chance – lead to a second chance at life for cancer patients worldwide, said Emily Price, co-organizer of the event and Marshall’s NMDP chapter president.
“Hopefully, people today at Marshall, by signing up and joining the registry, can be called in the future and really help save someone’s life,” Price said. “It may not be somebody even in our country; it could be somebody in Europe, Africa, Asia, anywhere.”
As was precisely the case with Price, who is not only a freshman at Marshall but also a survivor of biphenotypic leukemia. With the help of the NMDP, she received a bone marrow transplant from a 24-year-old college student in Poland who participated in a campus-wide swab event and, two years later, received the call saying he was a match.
Price said her personal experience with NMDP inspired her to found Marshall’s chapter in January with the goal of helping patients in Huntington, which is why she didn’t hesitate to organize the swab event after another Marshall student reached out to her on behalf of his fiancée.
Braden Cotton, co-organizer of the event and freshman, is the doting fiancé of Alex Armstrong, a 2024 graduate of Cabell Midland High School. Early in 2024, at just 17-years-old, Armstrong was diagnosed with anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
After months of intense treatment, she was declared in remission in August 2024, but her cancer has recurred, and a stem-cell transplant is necessary for her treatment, Cotton said.
“It would save her life,” Cotton said. “I mean, in short, it is her only chance of living past the next few years.”
Prior to her diagnosis, Cotton said Armstrong was a great softball player and pitcher. Even through illness, he said she loves her cats fiercely and is “just a fun person to be around.”
As a cancer survivor, Price said it would hold great significance to her if Alex’s match was found as a result of the event.
“Coming from the opposite side, I guess you could say as a patient looking for a donor, I had an event for myself in my hometown. No one was a match,” Price said. “So, someone here at Marshall – in the Marshall community – could become Alex’s match or somebody’s match, and that would just mean the world to me.”
Even so, Cotton maintained the event was simply in honor of Alex, not specifically for Alex, and he hoped to raise awareness for all patients with rare forms of cancer.
“Of course, it’s important personally for me and for this community, but it’s that way for thousands of people,” Cotton said. “So, NMDP is very, very important.”
Baylee Parsons can be contacted at [email protected].
