Two cancer survivors are expected to meet the strangers who helped save their lives Friday at City of Hope’s annual bone marrow transplant reunion.
The event, held on the Duarte campus, coincides with the 50th anniversary of City of Hope’s bone marrow transplant program, which has performed more than 20,000 transplants since 1976, according to officials.
Among those participating are Pasadena high school senior Vaughn Wilson and Alhambra resident Lynn Leiro, both of whom underwent transplants after battling leukemia.
Wilson, now 18, said he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in late 2022 after experiencing severe fatigue and back pain that cut short his active lifestyle.
“I had just done a 100-mile bike race a few months earlier,” Wilson said in a statement. “But then I couldn’t finish rides I had done dozens of times before. And my back pain got so bad I could barely walk.”
After chemotherapy failed to eliminate the cancer, Wilson said he was referred to City of Hope, where doctors recommended a bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an unrelated donor.
A match was identified through an international registry, connecting Wilson with a donor in Germany he had never met. The donor was Johanna Seeger, 24, of Düsseldorf.
“I remember feeling so relieved knowing there was someone out there who wanted to donate. You don’t know who they are or where they’re from. You just know they chose to help a stranger,” Wilson said.
In July 2023, officials said he underwent intensive chemotherapy and radiation before receiving donor stem cells.
“That little bag (of stem cells) changed everything. It literally gave me my life back,” Wilson said.
Following months of recovery, officials said Wilson is now cancer-free and preparing to graduate from high school, with plans to attend college.
Leiro, 40, was diagnosed with leukemia in late 2023, just weeks after completing treatment for triple-negative breast cancer.
“Everything I knew about cancer changed overnight,” Leiro said. “I was told I wasn’t leaving the hospital and that I would need a transplant.”
After multiple rounds of treatment failed, she underwent CAR T-cell therapy, an advanced treatment that helped bring her cancer into remission and made a transplant possible, officials said.
She received a bone marrow transplant in August 2024. Leiro said her donor, Patrick Abboud, 28, of Asheville, North Carolina, gave her more than just a chance at survival.
“Because of my donor, I was able to see my daughter graduate high school and go off to college,” she said. “I get more time with my family, more time to make memories. I’ll never be able to repay that gift.”
Doctors said cases like Wilson’s and Leiro’s reflect decades of advances in transplant medicine.
“Bone marrow transplant has always been about giving patients an opportunity for cure,” said Dr. Stephen Forman of City of Hope. “For some patients, it’s part of their first treatment plan; for others it comes later. In every case the goal is the same: to match them with the right donor, support them through the procedure safely and give hope that the treatment results in a cure.”
For Wilson and Leiro, the reunion marks a long-awaited moment — meeting face-to-face the strangers whose decision to donate gave them a second chance at life.