Eugenio La Mesa's Blog on Social Business

BMT from haploidentical mother to child with thalassemia

Bone Marrow Transplant(BMT) from matched donor is available since more than 30 years, and it is the main cure available for thalassemia major patients to become thalassemia free with no more transfusions. But only 25% of patients have a matched donor.

The good news is that it is possible to do the BMT even if there is no matched donor, using the mother as the donor. This BMT, called "from haploidentical mother to child with thalassemia" has been invented in 2002 by Dr. Pietro Sodani (Cure Thalassemia co-founder and scentific coordinator).

In the Cure Thalassemia site we have added a page dedicated to this topic, with all the main information, and links to the scientific papers.

I strongly believe that this is the future of BMT, because the vast majority of thalassemia patients has a mother in good shape, which is what is necessary to do this BMT.

Testimonials of Bone Marrow Transplant(BMT) in thalassemia

In the Cure Thalassemia site, we have added a new BMT testimonials page, to allow parents and patients who are planning to do a BMT for thalassemia to be able to talk to patients and their parents who have already done a BMT.

We think that this is something very important, because just talking to the doctors might not be enough. Read all the details here.

Cure Thalassemia MoU with Narayana Hrudayalaya/MSCC on BMT for thalassemia,research and lower the cost

Cure Thalassemia has signed a new MoU with the Narayana Hrudayalaya(NH)  and the Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre(MSCC) in India.

It is about

• Cure Thalassemia patients can do BMT at NH/MSCC with the daily supervision of Dr. Pietro Sodani 
• significantly reduce the cost of the BMT
• do research in the field of BMT both for matched donor and haploidentical BMT

More deatiled info in the Cure Thalassemia blog.

Thanks to all the people who made this agreement possibile, I'm firmly convinced that the joint staff of Cure Thalassemia, Narayana Hrudayalaya and the Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre can do great things for the thalassemia patients.

Boehringer Ingelheim, Ashoka global partner of “Making more health”, supports Cure Thalassemia

Boehringer Ingelheim, one of the main pharmaceutical companies in the world, which is also global partner of Ashoka in the “Making more health” project to support social entrepreneurs in the health-care sector, has decided to sustain Cure Thalassemia, with a donation.

I heartily thank Boehringer Ingelheim for their trust in the innovative model of Cure Thalassemia, and also in the people involved in the project, starting with the co-founder and scientific director Dr. Pietro Sodani.

We are studying other joint cooperations for the future.

Google gives an AdWords Grant to Cure Thalassemia

Google has given an AdWords Grant to Cure Thalassemia, with 10,000 USD per month of free ads on Google.

We will use it raise the awareness fo the BMT-Bone Marrow Transplantation (so far the only cure available) and the free advice of Dr. Pietro Sodani (co-founder and scientific coordinator).

Thanks a lot to Google for this opportunity, and to my friend Claudio Zamboni for his invaluable and passionate help.

 

Welcome "Cure Thalassemia Italia ONLUS"!

Finally, we have created Cure Thalassemia Italia ONLUS, an italian charity whose goal is to support the Cure Thalassemia mission to use the social business model of the Nobel Prize Yunus to do Bone Marrow Transplantation in a financially self sustainable way; another important goal is to improve the research for the cure of thalassemia.

Co-founders
Eugenio La Mesa
Pietro Sodani

Chairman
Eugenio La Mesa

Scientific Coordinator
Pietro Sodani

Scientific Advisor
Prof. Guido Lucarelli

Board of Directors
Eugenio La Mesa, Pietro Sodani, Luca La Mesa

Thanks to all the friends who have helped to reach this goal:
Patrizia Morucci, Stefano Galanti, Valerio Vanghetti, Claudia D'Apruzzo, Flavio Notari, Andrea Vitali and Alessandro Serra Caracciolo.

I'm very happy, it is another important step!