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Five student organizations will host a bone marrow registry drive on Tuesday, April 19, from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Bart Luedeke Center Cavalla Room on the Lawrenceville campus. The drive will support the charitable organizations Be the Match and Community Blood Services. 

Bone marrow transplants can be used to treat patients with Hodgkin’s disease, leukemia and solid-tumor cancers, such as breast or ovarian. 

“The costs of the registry, however, are significant,” explained Lauren Kohn, a student in the Post Baccalaureate Premedical Studies program at Rider. “Beyond administrative costs, the cheek swab results must be ‘typed’ — much like DNA — to give more information about matching the donor with a recipient.”

During the bone marrow registry drive, the Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Group, Rider’s field hockey team, and three fraternities and sororities, will collect donor demographics and take cheek swabs. The information will be cataloged to assist in matching donors with recipients. In addition to raising awareness of the event and maximizing bone marrow registrants, the student organizations, are raising money to offset the costs of registering potential donors.

The Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Group came up with the idea to hold the drive when Dr. Bryan Spiegelberg, assistant professor of Chemistry and chair of the Premedical Studies Committee, participated in a bone marrow drive and was selected to be a bone marrow donor. Spiegelberg is mentoring the student-led event at Rider.

This is one of the first events held by the new Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Group, founded by Michael Briehler ’07, MBA ’10, who is currently a student in the Post Baccalaureate Premedical Studies program.

“After realizing Rider did not specifically cater to nontraditional students with health interests, I formed the club earlier in the semester to accommodate these nontraditional health-science students with support from Professor Spiegelberg, Chris De Frehn, and Dean (Boris) Vilic (of the College of Continuing Studies),” Briehler said. “Upcoming opportunities may also include guest speakers, networking, shared experience, questions and answers, MCAT preparation, and other related topics.”

Those wishing to donate to the upcoming bone marrow registry drive, may send a check payable to Be The Match Foundation, Attn: Bryan Spiegelberg/Be the Match, С����Ƶ, 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648.