A vital blood cell donation by a Chinese student was delivered to US doctors Tuesday in Beijing to save the life of a Chinese American. 

A team with Professor John McMannis, director of the US Cell Processing Laboratory's Department of Blood and Marrow Transplantation from the University of Texas, collected the peripheral blood stem cells from Wu Yu, a sophomore at the Chongqing University of Medical Sciences, at Daopei Hospital.

The recipient had long been searching stem cell databases in the United States for a donor. A perfect match is a one-in-hundreds-of-thousands shot.

At a ceremony to mark the life saving handover, Hong Junling, director of the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Donor Program Administration Center, said the donation was the first of such cells by the Chinese Marrow Database to an overseas recipient.

Members of the China Marrow Database received a request from their US counterparts on March 29 and found Wu a couple of weeks later.

(China Daily June 30, 2004)