Start — Fred Hutch at UW Medical Center, Seattle

Fred Hutch at UW Medical Center–Montlake is the planned starting point for Steps to Marrow 5. From Seattle, the itinerary heads north to Shoreline before continuing around the Salish Sea. The contemporary care location stands within a city closely associated with the development of marrow transplantation, a history reaching back to earlier institutions and another coast.

E. Donnall Thomas began his work at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York, in 1955. An early clinical paper followed in 1957. When he moved to Seattle in 1963, his team worked at the Public Health Hospital. Fred Hutch opened its original center in the First Hill neighborhood in 1975. The treatment emerged through years of research across several institutions, with teams building on earlier clinical and laboratory work.

Fred Hutch’s timeline records a landmark in 1979: a successful marrow transplant from an unrelated donor for a patient with leukemia. NMDP traces its own origins to that patient, Laura Graves, and the advocacy of her parents, Sherry and Robert. Their effort helped establish a national program that facilitated its first transplant in December 1987. Thomas shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Jeana Moore’s reason for walking is her granddaughter Jada. The foundation’s account records a leukemia diagnosis at one month old and a transplant at seven months, using marrow from Torsten Huber in Germany. He had registered after reading a newspaper article before Jada was born. Their story follows a family’s search across an ocean and the relationship that grew from the donation.