In August she had an umbilical-cord blood transplant, a procedure in which stem cells harvested from a donated umbilical cord are injected into the patient to encourage the formation of a new, healthy blood system.
“It has a good survival rate and it’s the next best thing” to a marrow transplant, said Katharina Harf, a co-founder and executive vice president of DKMS Americas, a bone marrow donor center.
Minorities are vastly underrepresented in the bone marrow donor registry, which makes suitable donors for minority patients difficult to locate. In addition, blacks and Hispanics have many more different tissue types than whites, Ms. Harf said, which makes the process of matching donor to patient more complex, especially for patients of mixed race or ethnicity. Shannon’s father is Hispanic and her mother, Odiney Brown, is black.
Shannon Skye Tavarez was born on Jan. 20, 1999. In “The Lion King” she played young Nala, a lion cub who was the best friend of Simba, the show’s lead character. She was chosen for the part after auditioning along with hundreds of other children at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in December 2008 and made her debut in September 2009.
“She was fearless, as a performer and as a young woman,” Ron Vodicka, the production stage manager for “The Lion King,” said in an interview on Tuesday. “She was never intimidated and she was constantly happy. After she was diagnosed, all she talked about was when she could come back.”
“It has a good survival rate and it’s the next best thing” to a marrow transplant, said Katharina Harf, a co-founder and executive vice president of DKMS Americas, a bone marrow donor center.
Minorities are vastly underrepresented in the bone marrow donor registry, which makes suitable donors for minority patients difficult to locate. In addition, blacks and Hispanics have many more different tissue types than whites, Ms. Harf said, which makes the process of matching donor to patient more complex, especially for patients of mixed race or ethnicity. Shannon’s father is Hispanic and her mother, Odiney Brown, is black.
Shannon Skye Tavarez was born on Jan. 20, 1999. In “The Lion King” she played young Nala, a lion cub who was the best friend of Simba, the show’s lead character. She was chosen for the part after auditioning along with hundreds of other children at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in December 2008 and made her debut in September 2009.
“She was fearless, as a performer and as a young woman,” Ron Vodicka, the production stage manager for “The Lion King,” said in an interview on Tuesday. “She was never intimidated and she was constantly happy. After she was diagnosed, all she talked about was when she could come back.”
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