"Would you like to save a life?" a group of seniors inquires daily to the influx of students making their way through Usdan. Alongside students selling tickets to the O.A.R. concert and Liquid Latex show, it seems like an interesting proposition. The group collecting names to join the national registry of bone marrow donors call its campaign the MIRAcle Project. Inspired by their friend and cancer- and bone marrow-transplant survivor Mira Elias, 21, about 10 Brandeis seniors, many of whom once shared a freshman hall with her, began this campaign in January to find as many new donors for the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry as possible. Bone marrow is the spongy tissue in the center of large bones in which new blood cells are produced. A transplant is necessary for someone whose bone marrow is not producing blood cells correctly.

In July 2004, Elias, then a rising junior at Brandeis, was diagnosed with Adult Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. After many rounds chemotherapy and almost a year in remission, Elias relapsed in July 2005. This time, the only real option for survival was a bone marrow transplant, which she received in November 2005.

Last month, she surpassed the crucial 100-day mark following the transplant. During those first hundred days, she said, "your immune system is the weakest." She is now at home in Ann Arbor, Mich., where, without an immune system until a year after the transplant, she must still take extreme precautions to protect her health.

In honor of her survival and constantly upbeat attitude, her friends here organized the MIRAcle Project to help future patients with cancer and other diseases affecting blood or bone marrow.

"We are getting at least 100 people to honor those 100 days over which Mira triumphed," said Sevonne Eliyahu '06, one of Elias's friends who helped create the MIRAcle Project.

Only 30 percent of people in need of a bone marrow transplant find a match within their family, Eliyahu said. The rest must look to look to the national registry for help. It is essential to find a close match, because otherwise the donor's immune system might attack the recipient's cells, which is known as Graft Versus Host Disease. By organizing the MIRAcle project, these seniors hope to increase the odds of a match for those like Elias who need to rely on the national registry to save their lives.

Eliyahu said the group has been overwhelmed with Elias' recovery and they feel an obligation to express their respect and love for her actively.

"We are a community and that is what you do when somebody you care about and you know is going through something terrible like this: You rise to the occasion and stand by them and help them in any way you can," Eliyahu said. "We only hope that if it happened to us that we could have the same amount of strength."

Members of the project said that donor registration is an easy process that could lead to something amazing.

"All that happens when you register is you get a cheek swipe and they do typing and keep you on file" said Linda Garvey '06, another of the project's coordinators.

Only one in 20,000 people on the registry are ever contacted as potential donors, said Eloise Adamson of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and only one in 200 people end up being good enough matches. For years the actual donation process entailed a painful incision into the bone, but is now done through a blood transfusion.

Elias said she and her family were shocked to hear her leukemia diagnosis at first.

"My jaw dropped, I started crying," Elias said. "I asked my mom 'Do they have the wrong blood results? This isn't me!'"

Elias underwent a week of induction chemotherapy and then in September 2004, began consolidation, which she said was four consecutive months of chemotherapy.

Elias returned to Brandeis for the 2005 spring semester, but suffered a relapse that summer. After another round of chemotherapy, she and her family decided that a bone-marrow transplant, a process Elias knew to be "one of the most serious medical procedures out there," was necessary.

Although she suffered another relapse a week before the operation, Elias still went through with the transplant at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston on Nov. 4.

Witnessing a bone-marrow transplant was a miraculous experience, Elias said.

"The stem cells are really amazing. It is liquid life in a bag essentially," she said. "You look at it and you think this little bag is going to save my life and it came from a donor I don't know out of the kindness of her heart."

Usually, potential donors must pay $150 for tissue typing in order to join the registry, and Eliayahu said this is a lot to ask from college students. The students in the MIRAcle project have raised enough money to make the registry free for Brandeis students, said Linda Garvey '06, another one of Elias's friends and coordinators of the MIRAcle Project.

Dana Farber is subsidizing the Brandeis drive so that it costs only $65 per person. The MIRAcle Project has also raised almost $6,000 by seeking donations from friends and family, planning various fundraisers, including a night at the Lincoln bar and holding "bake sale after bake sale after bake sale," Eliyahu said. Half of this sum came from a sponsor who matched the students' fundraising.

The program will continue to register students this Wednesday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Multipurpose Room.

"Take advantage of this opportunity. It is free and now is a great time to get on the list. It could be your family member you are saving," Eliyahu said. "Who would pass up the opportunity to save someone's life?"



Editor's note: Alexandra Perloe, a deputy editor of the Justice, is an organizer of the MIRAcle Project.