Hopkinton, MA-based EMC is throwing its weight behind a massive social media campaign to find a bone marrow donor for one of its employees, 28-year-old Nick Glasgow. The “donor drive” arrived in the Boston area today with events at EMC locations in Cambridge, MA, and Franklin, MA, where potential donors can visit to see whether their own marrow might provide a match.
Glasgow, a California resident, was diagnosed with leukemia nine weeks ago, according to EMC. Initial treatments have proved ineffective, and no matching bone marrow donor has been identified in national databases. The search is complicated by the fact that Glasgow is of mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage, making the pool of potential donors much smaller. (Glasgow’s story and the challenges of blood-marrow matching for mixed-raced patients are the subject of this AP article.)
Companies in the technology business, including EMC, Cisco, Salesforce.com, and NetApp, have been rallying to Glasgow’s cause, publicizing the national donor drive through Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, and the like.
Potential donors who are themselves of mixed ethnicity, are healthy, and are between the ages of 18 and 60 can visit these EMC locations today to be screened:
11 Cambridge Technology Center, Cambridge MA (4th Floor)
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
50 Constitution Blvd, Franklin, MA (Johnson Conference Room, 3rd Floor)
12:30 pm – 2:30 pm
The donor drive is being hosted by EMC and the Be The Match Foundation. Readers outside the Boston area can sign up to receive a testing kit from the Asian American Donor Program.
