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

"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."

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. 

"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.

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).

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.

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."

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.

"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.