Bone marrow drive hits home for Michigan State athletics, as one of its own battles cancer

EAST LANSING – The food comes from all over for Michigan State executive athletic director Jim Pignataro: A batch of cookies from the student body president. A pizza from a neighbor. A casserole from someone at his church.

But most of the time, it’s lasagna.

“I call it the three lasagnas of compassion,” Pignataro said. “At any particular point, we have three lasagnas in the freezer.”

Since 2015, when Pignataro was first diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma called small lymphocytic lymphoma, friends and family members have rallied around him to alleviate some of the burdens that come with battling a life-threatening disease. Pignataro has been the reluctant recipient.

“The hardest thing to do in life is receive compassion,” Pignataro, 47, said. “I think a lot of us in athletics are of a giving nature. To be able to receive all the compassion from all the people in the community — our family, our church, the people that we work with — it’s become overwhelming. You can’t possibly repay it.”

In November, his cancer progressed to large-cell B lymphoma, called Richter’s Syndrome.

Now, there’s something Pignataro needs much more than just pasta and ricotta cheese. He needs a match.

On Wednesday, MSU football and field hockey are joining forces to run their second annual “Be The Match” campaign, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program. Researchers have found that young, healthy individuals aged 18 to 44 are the best bone marrow donors.

This drive, one of many that takes place on college campuses, is meant to get hundreds added to the bone marrow registry. For MSU, it means a little bit more.

“For everybody here, it hits a little close to home,” Michigan State field hockey coach Helen Knull said. “Jim is in a fight for his life at the moment and a bone marrow transplant is going to be in his future. And he currently doesn’t have a match.”

It’s a simple and painless process to participate. Individuals who sign up are mailed a kit and asked to swab the inside of their cheek. From there, their DNA will be tested and added to a global registry.

You can sign up at The Rock, just off Farm Lane on the north bank of the Red Cedar River, weather permitting, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday or, if it rains, inside the MSU auditorium. Individuals who want to participate but are not on campus can text “MSUsaves” to 61474 and a swab kit will be sent to their home. Or you can visit https://join.bethematch.org/msusaves to sign up.

“I think people need to be aware it’s as important as giving blood or giving platelets,” Pignataro said. “These types of things for healthy people to do are critical for the survival of millions of people.”

Pignataro, a father to Alison and Jimmy and husband to Alana, was born in Queens, New York, and grew up in Raymond, Maine. He played Division III college baseball in Maine and he's beginning to pass along his passion to his son. Pignataro has spent the bulk of his adult life working at MSU.

His cancer fight began in 2015, with what he initially thought were gastrointestinal issues. After several months, doctors performed a scan and found a large lymph node exposed in his chest, almost 20 centimeters long.

Former MSU AD Mark Hollis reached out on Pignataro’s behalf to the University of Michigan, where his treatment began. Doctors at Ohio State have also played a pivotal role in his care, with chemotherapy and a variety of immunotherapy drugs.

Then, in January 2018, Pignataro traveled to the University of Washington and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. He qualified for a clinical trial called CAR T-cell replacement therapy, where doctors took Pignataro’s T-cells, reengineered them with a directly targeted therapy and inserted them back into his body.

Within two weeks, he was in remission.

However, in November a lymph node burst in his neck. His cancer has progressed to the large-cell B lymphoma. Pignataro tried an experimental treatment with a new IV medication. When that didn’t work, doctors tried chemotherapy that caused him to lose his hair.

“That’s when it became real,” he said.

But when that stopped working, doctors started looking for new treatments. He’ll begin a new autoimmune therapy Tuesday in Columbus, Ohio, but ultimately he’ll need the bone marrow transplant.

That's where the "Be the Match" campaign comes in. Pignataro’s DNA is somewhat unique. He’s half-Italian, and his mother is a mix of Czechoslovakian and Lithuanian.

His sister got tested. No match. Several cousins, too. They didn't match, either. 

Researchers found someone who was an 80 percent match, but the individual backed out and declined to donate bone marrow. So for now, the search for a match continues.

“When someone asked me to be more public, I didn’t want to do it,” Pignataro said. “I never felt like I looked like I had cancer. I’ve kind of taken a step out there in the last two months. I need to leverage what I do for a living. There are so many people out there who are living with blood cancers. You may not even know it.”

There’s a 1-in-430 chance that a young person’s DNA could be the match that helps saves a stranger with a blood cancer. The goal is to get 500 individuals to sign up.

Perhaps Pignataro’s match is somewhere in the MSU community. But more than anything, his hope is that MSU can help find at least one match for someone like him.

“My hope is that we can register hundreds of people and we’ll save someone,” Pignataro said.

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Contact Mike DeFabo at mdefabo@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.