Family pleads for help as teen faces life-threatening bone marrow failure

21 Mar 2026 By foxnews

A New York City father is desperately seeking a donor to save his teenage son's life.

Max Uribe, now 15 and a high-school freshman, has just weeks until he will need to be hospitalized with a rare blood disorder that could lead to a deadly cancer.

"Max was just 6 when we first noticed there was something wrong with his blood counts," his father, Juan Uribe, told Fox News Digital. "At the time, we thought it was due to a viral infection, but they never fully recovered back to their normal level."

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In December 2024, Max's condition grew worse, and he was diagnosed with clonal cytopenia, a condition involving the blood and bone marrow.

"All three of his blood counts are low - red, white and platelets," Uribe said.

In August 2025, another bone marrow biopsy revealed that Max is on a path to bone marrow failure, creating an urgent need for a stem cell transplant.

"The disease has continued to progress, as his blood counts continue to drop, and therefore, we have to take him to transplant in May of this year," Uribe said.

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If left untreated, Max's condition could lead to MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), a type of blood cancer, and from there possibly into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

A bone marrow match must have a specific type of HLA (human leukocyte antigen), which are proteins found on the surface of most cells in the body, according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).

The closer the donor's HLA markers are to the patient's, the more likely the body will accept the new cells without a high risk of complications.

People from the same ethnic background are more likely to share similar HLA types, meaning a patient is most likely to find a compatible donor among individuals with similar ancestry, per the NMDP.

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Non-Hispanic White patients have a 79% chance of a perfect match. That drops to 49% for Hispanic/Latino patients, 29% for Black patients and even lower for mixed ancestries, the NMDP reports.

Because Max is a "very rare combination" of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult, Uribe noted.

"For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating," he said. "The thinking is, we need large numbers if we're going to have that perfect match for my son."

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Max, who participates in competitive tennis and varsity wrestling, just had additional blood work done on Friday, which revealed that his counts continue to plummet.

"We're at the point where this is beginning to manifest a bit more, which is why the urgency is so critical," Uribe said.

If a donor is not secured by Max's hospitalization in May, the medical team will have to proceed with a partial match, which is not ideal for a number of reasons.

"The survival rate is meaningfully lower with a partial match, and there's more risk of graft versus host disease (GVHD), which could lead to complications in the process," Uribe said. With GVHD, the donor cells begin to attack the body.

To help prevent this with a partial match, Max would likely need chemotherapy and immunosuppressants for a longer period of time, which could weaken his immune system.

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Anyone interested in donating can order a free test kit on the Team Max website. The kit includes a quick cheek swab that is sent back to the lab to determine whether someone is a match.