UB student campaigns for Gift of Life registry

UB junior Alissa Bowers pares it down to its essence: Would you spend five minutes to actually save a life? she asks. Bowers is a pre-medical student hoping to become a physician — to help people — and it makes basic, lucid sense to express her current passion that way.

Bowers’ “five-minutes-to-save-a life” thoughts concisely spell out her role as ambassador and president of UB’s Gift of Life Marrow Registry. She aims to raise awareness about worldwide bone marrow and stem cell registries while encouraging the UB community to help make more of these treatments happen.

“Most people want to be a good person,” Bowers says. “I personally would be overjoyed if I were selected and matched with someone because I would have the power to save someone’s life. Small things make big ripples.”

Only 30% of people who have blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma are able to find a match for stem cell transplants within their families, she explains.

“That leaves 70% of people who have to source out to strangers to find a match,” she says. “That’s where the worldwide bone marrow and stem cell registry comes into play.”

As UB's Gift of Life president, Bowers’ role is to find more donors. So she works with five other campus ambassadors, more than 30 volunteers and her supervisor coordinating all schools with Gift of Life chapters in the states of New York and New Jersey.

As such, Bowers oversees and runs campus swab drives where students agree to a short online survey and three non-invasive cheek swabs that are then sent to the Gift of Life registry. These drives aim to add students to international bone marrow and stem cell registries to diversify the pool of donors and hopefully match someone suffering from cancer with a donor.

“The target age for donors we are looking for is between 18 to 35, and that’s fairly close to college ages,” she says. “You are looking for young, healthy individuals who are able to give stem cells without complications. Campuses are very diverse, and the match rate between people of the same ethnicity and race is much higher. That’s important because for Asian Americans, under 50% are able to find a match within this database. Caucasians match at just under 80%.”

If they are matched, the donors have the option of continuing along the donor path. Ninety percent of the donations are for stem cells. Donating stem cells is similar to giving blood, Bowers says. It just takes longer. Donating bone marrow is more involved and requires a bigger commitment, but the payoffs can be dramatic.

Bowers is another UB student ahead of her class and overflowing with achievement. Besides organizing Gift of Life donors, she has been a member of the marching band, is a classically trained concert pianist, also plays violin, speaks Japanese as a first language, is a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. She also models and is an active gamer to relax. She is drawn to social media, creating content for several companies. She is also a tour guide for UB, a research assistant in the Neelamegham glycobiology lab and a UB True Blue Ambassador for the 2024-25 academic year.

Bowers graduated early from Williamsville South High School as a junior. After coming to UB in the fall of 2023, she also plans to graduate college early, aiming for medical school.

"I love showing school spirit for UB. I’ve lived in Buffalo my entire life and have a passion for the city and the school,” she says.

“I wasn’t planning to go to UB for most of high school. But coming here, I am so glad. I love Buffalo. I love the community, the people, and I love the programs. I really want to show my spirit for that.”

But when it comes down to it, her desire to make a difference in people’s lives brings everything together.

“I absolutely love helping people,” Bowers says. “To be able to make an impact on people’s lives and people’s families is important to me and why I wanted to go into the field of medicine to begin with.”