Amy Giver estimates she rode her bicycle some 6,000 miles over the past five months on a mission to raise awareness and recruit new donors for the national bone marrow donor registry. The registry, operated by the Be The Match organization, matches unrelated donors to people with life-threatening blood cancers who need a bone marrow transplant.

After traversing the country from the West Coast to the East Coast, Giver wrapped up her journey at Emory University Hospital, where she was greeted by her sister, Cindy Giver, a Winship Cancer Institute researcher, and taken up to the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Center in the hospital to be welcomed and congratulated by staff and patients.

Giver, a CrossFit trainer, says when she first learned how matched unrelated donors can save the lives of people with leukemia and other blood cancers, she took up the cause at her gym in Silicon Valley and signed up 80 members to the registry. That convinced her to combine a lifelong goal, cycling across the USA, with a mission to support Be The Match donor drives in communities around the country. The more potential donors in the registry, the better chance patients have of finding a match.

Cindy Giver, Emory researcher, with her sister Amy at the end of her long bicycle journey

Amy's sister Cindy has been a bone marrow transplant researcher at Winship for 15 years.  Giver and her colleagues in the lab of Edmund K. Waller, MD, pursue translational research aimed at improving outcomes and lessening side effects from bone marrow and stem cell transplantation. Winship's bone marrow transplant program is a leader in this area of cancer treatment, having performed almost 5,000 transplants.

Amy ended her ride just in time to attend the annual Be The Match Soirèe that took place Sept. 19 in Atlanta. The event recognized Winship's Amelia Langston, MD, interim chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology in the Emory University School of Medicine and medical director of the Winship Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program. Langston was awarded the 2015 Be The Match Leadership Award for her outstanding commitment to the organization and to advancing bone marrow transplant research and treatment.