Alum’s Search for a Stem Cell Donor for His Son Inspires Campus Drive

After Juan Uribe ’96 went viral with his social media campaign, a University effort added 1,350 people to the registry

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By Joe Wilensky

In a video uploaded to TikTok in mid-February 2026, Juan Uribe ’96 looks into the camera and says: “I’m posting this because I need your help to save my son.” He was urgently seeking a stem-cell donor for his 15-year-old son, Max, who faces bone marrow failure and a high risk of blood cancer.

The video—Uribe’s first—went viral. It was soon viewed by 26 million people, nearly 40,000 of whom requested at-home kits to donate. And his story made nationwide headlines, from CNN and CBS to People and USA Today.

The Arts & Sciences alum also reached out to his alma mater—which answered the call with a major campuswide event in mid-March.

To help Max and thousands of other people in need of life-saving intervention, Cornell hosted “Big Red, Big Impact”—a weeklong campaign in which students, faculty, and staff ages 18–35 were asked to join the national stem cell registry by doing a 30-second cheek swab.

The event was run in partnership with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), a nonprofit that facilitates transplants.

With nine swabbing stations across campus, it was the largest such event NMDP has ever hosted—drawing 1,350 potential donors of stem cells or blood marrow, whose samples will be added to the database.

A follow-up event, run by students and sponsored by NMDP, is scheduled for late April; those not in the Ithaca area can also join the registry by requesting a swabbing kit online.

As the March event’s organizers explain, universities are ideal locations to test for would-be matches because of their demographics—cells from younger donors lead to significantly better long-term outcomes—and their diversity, as there is a critical shortage of Black and Latino donors.

Universities are ideal locations to test for would-be matches because of their demographics—cells from younger donors lead to significantly better long-term outcomes—and their diversity, as there is a critical shortage of Black and Latino donors.

Max’s Colombian heritage makes finding an ideal match particularly challenging. Across the NMDP and other global donor registries, white patients have an 80% chance of a perfect match; for Latino and Hispanic patients, it’s 50%, and for Black patients, 30%.

The Uribes learned 10 years ago that Max had low levels of white blood cells and platelets, among other markers, putting him at high risk for developing myelodysplastic syndrome or acute myeloid leukemia; they have been carefully monitoring him ever since.

“The crazy thing about it is that his day to day is fine,” says Uribe, who has also been getting the word out through the Class of 1996 Council, the national office of his fraternity (Sigma Alpha Epsilon), and a dedicated website, swabformax.com.

“He’s active with school, active with sports, active socially with friends. You’d never know that anything was wrong. But that’s what’s so dangerous about these blood diseases—they can be there and you don’t realize anything’s wrong until it’s too late. The silver lining for us, or the blessing in disguise, was that we happened to stumble upon it early.”

While Max still feels healthy, tests in 2025 showed an alarming change in his blood and bone-marrow markers that put a ticking clock on his health. Doctors recommended a stem-cell transplant.

If a perfect donor is found, Uribe says, his son’s five-year survival rate could be 95%.

“This started off as a personal search to help my son find a perfect-match donor,” Uribe said on TikTok, “but I realize this is a need that many other families have—and that could help save thousands of lives.”

His mission is ambitious: he hopes to add 1 million new potential donors to the 43 million people in the worldwide database by April, while also significantly diversifying that donor pool.

Uribe’s message has been heard: Of the thousands of at-home kits sent out since Uribe’s online postings, 57% were requested by people of Hispanic or Latino heritage.

This started off as a personal search to help my son find a perfect-match donor, but I realize this is a need that many other families have—and that could help save thousands of lives.

But because only about half of at-home testing kits typically get returned, in-person events—where people submit cheek swabs then and there—are key to boosting registration.

“We constantly have people aging off the registry, and so we have to keep adding new, young, diverse registry members and potential donors,” says NMDP spokesperson Erica Sevilla. “It’s a very selfless act to donate, and it’s a living donation: we regenerate our blood stem cells, we make millions every single day.”

About 18,500 patients are diagnosed with blood cancers in the U.S. each year, Sevilla says, and most will need unrelated donors for stem cells or blood marrow. Only 25% of patients find a match within their families.

While the word “transplant” is used in conjunction with bone marrow and stem-cell therapies, the word may be off-putting or scary for potential donors, says Dr. Catherine McGuinn, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine who has treated Max since he was six.

About 90% of the time, blood stem cells are collected through a simple nonsurgical outpatient procedure that is very similar to donating platelets or plasma. In about 10% of cases, patients require donations of bone marrow, which is a same-day procedure performed under anesthesia, where liquid marrow is drawn from the pelvic bone.

Unlike being a living kidney donor (or donating organs after death), “this is a resource that you’re able to give that is renewable,” McGuinn says.

“This is really low risk, high reward—it’s a couple of cheek swabs that give you the opportunity to match with someone. There has been so much research, advancements, and improving outcomes for patients, that it’s truly a second chance at life for people.”

Top: Juan Uribe ’96 chats with students in Willard Straight Hall during the stem-cell donor drive. (Ryan Young / Cornell University)

Published March 24, 2026

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