Everyone is familiar with the concept of DNA, thinks Bert Elbers, spokesperson for the Matchis Foundation. But does the word HLA typing also ring a bell? “Usually question marks arise. While that is so important to find a stem cell match. Everyone has such an HLA typing in their DNA. You can compare that with a series of 10 numbers.”
If you want a match between donor and patient, the two should preferably both have exactly the same 10 ‘numbers’ in their DNA. “And that’s what makes it so difficult. There are tens of thousands of combinations of those numbers, so you can figure out how many people it takes to find a potential match. Even immediate family doesn’t match a patient 70 percent of the time.”
For Ege there is another extra difficult factor. Not many people – like him – have a Turkish background and are registered in the donor bank. “Because most donor banks are located in Western Europe or in North America, there is a shortage of non-Western donors. For example, if you were born and raised in the Netherlands, just like your distant ancestors, the chance is now 80 to 90 percent that you find a match. For Ege, that chance was much lower.”