The Sickle Cell Transplant Advocacy & Research Alliance (STAR)

The Sickle Cell Transplant Advocacy & Research Alliance (STAR) is a non-profit organization created by a group of pediatric hematology and stem cell transplant doctors. STAR seeks to enhance the lives of children suffering from sickle cell disease through blood and marrow transplantation. STAR conducts research to create better transplant approaches-ones that safely achieve cure for the greatest number and provides both critical funding as well as an organized collaborative network for this important research.

Your support of STAR goes directly toward medical research and testing new transplant approaches to make a cure safer and more available. With your help, doctors will improve stem cell transplant therapy for sickle cell disease. That means the cure will be available for more children and will have fewer side effects.

Across North America, advances are being made in the use of blood and marrow transplants. There is a growing population of individuals who have been transplanted for sickle cell disease. Some who were children when they had this life saving therapy are now adults. STAR centers will analyze health information on approximately 200 persons who underwent transplant for sickle cell disease. For the first time, we will be able to study health outcomes and how people fared after five, ten, even fifteen years.