For patients with aggressive blood cancers in Lake County, the search for a bone marrow donor is often a race against time they do not have.

I still remember one man from Waukegan, a big wrestling fan who had ignored his own body aches and knee pain, but the day he took his beloved French bulldog to get micro-chipped, everything changed.

“I picked up Chapito and heard something in my back snap,” said Miguel Cervantes.

That moment — painful as it was — may have saved his life. Miguel checked into the hospital where he learned his cancer diagnosis. A stem cell transplant at City of Hope Chicago helped him survive.

Today, he is alive, cancer-free and back with his family and community.

Every three minutes, someone in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer. In 2026, more than 192,000 Americans are expected to be diagnosed with leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma or multiple myeloma. For many, an allogeneic stem cell transplant—using cells from a donor—offers the best chance for survival. Yet 75% of patients will not find a suitable donor match within their own families.

I have spent more than two decades treating patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers, and have performed more than 2,500 bone marrow and stem cell transplants. I have seen firsthand how cellular therapies have transformed outcomes that were once uniformly fatal into survivable, and in some cases curable diseases.

But one reality has not changed: only about 30% of patients who need a stem cell transplant will find a fully matched donor within their own family. The majority depend on unrelated volunteers listed in donor registries around the world.

That dependency makes access fragile. It is not enough that treatment exists. Patients must also find the right donor, at the right time, with the right tissue match, and often while their disease is progressing.

Bone marrow transplantation works by replacing diseased or destroyed blood-forming stem cells with healthy ones from a donor. For many patients, it remains one of the most powerful treatments we have to achieve long-term remission and cure.

The field has advanced dramatically. This year marks 50 years of bone marrow transplantation at City of Hope, where what once was an experimental and high-risk procedure has become a standard and lifesaving therapy. Across our system, more than 20,000 transplants have been performed, reflecting decades of scientific progress and clinical innovation.

More recently, treatments such as CAR T-cell therapy have expanded options for patients who previously had none, but these therapies require highly specialized infrastructure, expertise, and most importantly, timely access.

Timing truly is everything.

At City of Hope Cancer Center in Zion,, we operate a National Marrow Donor Program collection site. These centers are critical links in a system that connects willing donors to patients who may otherwise run out of options.

Yet even as therapies advance, access remains one of the greatest barriers in cancer care.

Patients often face delays related to insurance authorization, referral timing, caregiver availability, transportation, and the need to travel to specialized centers. Blood cancers do not wait. Delays in donor identification or treatment initiation can change the course of a disease within weeks.

Disparities in donor availability further complicate this picture. Because tissue types are inherited, patients are most likely to match with donors who share their ancestral background. Yet donor registries do not fully reflect the diversity of the populations we serve. As a result, many patients, particularly those from racially and ethnically diverse communities, face longer waits or lower probabilities of finding a suitable match.

This gap is not merely scientific. It is structural.

The future of cancer treatment is extraordinarily promising, but breakthroughs alone are not enough if patients cannot access them in time. Advances in immunotherapy, transplantation, and cellular therapy must be matched by systems that ensure timely referral, equitable donor representation, and access to specialized centers.

Most people will never need a bone marrow transplant. But for those who do, the impact of donor availability is immediate and profound. A simple registration process and cheek swab can one day translate into another person’s chance of survival.

For families in Lake County facing leukemia or lymphoma, hope often begins not in a laboratory, but in the decision of a stranger willing to donate cells that could save a life.

That decision—and better access to care—can change everything.

• Dr. Tulio Rodriguez is a blood cancer specialist and director of City of Hope Chicago’s Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program.