Mikhail Rubin’s life was saved by the effectiveness of an allogeneic stem cell transplant, made possible by a gift from Matt Sakofs.
“I feel good, thanks to a great job done by doctors,” Rubin said during an interview alongside Sakofs with CURE®. “And of course, I thank you, my donor, who is in front of me (on Zoom). It was a virtuous thing to do. He didn’t know me, but he decided to do this donation that saved my life.”
In 2018, Rubin, 73, a resident of the Bay Area of California, was identified as having the uncommon leukemia type chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML). The American Cancer Society describes CMML as a specific type of cancer that starts in the bone marrow’s blood-forming cells and spreads to the circulation.
The Stanford Cancer Institute’s specialists informed Rubin soon after he was diagnosed that he would need to wait before starting any kind of treatment because a bone marrow transplant had a chance of toxicities.
Rubin needed treatment in 2021 because his blood cell counts declined. Rubin joined in a clinical trial, but instead of getting a bone marrow transplant, he got an allogeneic stem cell transplant (transplant from someone else) using a stem cell therapy called Orca-T.
Several years ago, while on vacation in Israel, Sakofs, 33, who lives in Fairfield, Connecticut with his wife and daughter, age 2, donated stem cells.
“(The stem cell donation) occurred about over 10 years ago, at this point now, where I happened to be on a birthright trip in Israel, and there was a registry booth just set up,” Sakofs said, “They were looking for individuals to swab the inside of their cheek, it was literally like a 10-second procedure.”
Sakofs was told he would be contacted if there was ever a match.
In March of 2021, Sakofs received the call, which he described was “out of the blue.”
“It was so unexpected, based on something that I had done (more than ten years ago),” Sakofs said, “that didn’t even take too much time to do.”
According to Dr. Jeffrey Schriber, the chief of hematologic malignancies at City of Hope Phoenix and a specialist in both hematology (the study of blood) and hematologic oncology, donating stem cells and signing up for the registry are “a piece of cake,” much like Sakofs did.
“Sometimes they’ll take a blood sample, sometimes they’ll take the cheek swab, it’s quite common that you’ll see big donor registrations where you can go up for free and do this,” Scriber told CURE® in a separate interview.
“There’s now data that suggests rather than giving more chemo and trying to get the disease under control, which some people thought was really important, just go right ahead (with a matched donor’s stem cells),” Schriber noted. “Because although the results are better if there’s less disease, the problem is a number of those patients never get to transplant.”
Additionally, Schriber mentioned that it could take up to three months for individuals who undergo an allogeneic stem cell transplant to feel better.
“Some patients get a very sore throat, often they’ll need blood transfusions or platelet transfusions, they may get fevers, those are all very common things that we see,” said Schriber. “When the blood counts recover, all that stuff generally gets better. But then, they’re at risk for the graft-versus-host-disease (where the donor’s stem cells attack the patient’s healthy cells), the medicines to treat graft-versus-host-disease make it more prone to infectious complications. So, those are all things that can occur.”
He stressed that patients may begin to regain their strength after the three months and are “able to resume a normal life and get back to where they want to be.”
In October 2021, Rubin’s life was restored after obtaining stem cells from Sakofs. The two first met in person this past spring, after Sakofs started an informational exchange, which took place an additional year and a half later.
“We met in May in New York City at one of the bakeries — a very casual place — but it was very emotional,” Rubin explained. “My son and his wife also came to this meeting, and so we shared our stories.”
Sakofs continued by saying that it was fortunate that Mikhail was traveling to see his family while Sakofs was in New York for work.
“It was a positive feeling that I was actually able to see the results of my donation, which were really just heartwarming. I got to meet some of (Mikhail’s) family, and he was telling me how he gets to see his grandkids and celebrate their birthdays. So, it just made it that much more meaningful, as opposed to just going on site and donating, so I was really glad that I could do that.”
