Saving Natalie: Family Launches International Search for Asian Donor

Feb. 16, 2010— -- Sitting in her hospital room, essentially quarantined from her friends, 8-year-old Natalie Nakatani has been shielded from the scariest part of her disease.

She doesn't know that out of the 13 million potential bone marrow donors in the world, none of them are a match for her. Or that while her greatest hope for survival is marrow from a donor of matching ethnicity, Asians make up just a small fraction of willing donors.

Natalie's family had hoped for a fresh start in 2010 after battling the little girl's acute myeloid leukemia for nearly 18 months.

The spunky San Francisco-area girl finished her last round of chemotherapy last year and the disease was in remission. She was gaining weight and happy to be re-enrolled in school.

"Hopes were really high they were done with this," close family friend Maritza Ruiz Kim told ABCNews.com.

But two weeks into the new year, a routine blood test caught something abnormal. An emergency bone marrow test confirmed the diagnosis -- the five rounds of chemotherapy Natalie was put through the year before weren't enough and the leukemia was back.

Recovering from two rounds of chemotherapy that cost her a head of hair, Natalie spends her time in a rainbow and butterfly-decorated room -- a gift from her grandparents and friends -- pouring through the Boxcar Children book series and playing bingo via teleconference with the other children in the hospital.

She misses her brother and her friends, who are not allowed in her room because of fears of the swine flu and other germs, and is looking forward to going home.

But getting out of quarantine solves only one problem for Natalie.

Doctors told her family their little girl now needs a bone marrow transplant. Her parents, Grant and Tammy Nakatani, and 5-year-old brother Sean, were quickly ruled out as possible donors, making her one of the 70 percent of leukemia patients who must seek an outside match.

"With her ethnic background, just being Asian, it's difficult to find that," Kim said.

Could you be a match for Natalie Nakatani? Click here for information.

While experts say the greatest hope for Natalie, who is half-Chinese and half-Japanese, with a bit of Vietnamese in the mix, is an Asian donor, registries have been checking her against everyone.

There have been eight drives held already since her Jan. 19 diagnosis and more are planned. Her friends have set up a Web site devoted to her search as well as a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

A family friend put together a television commercial-quality video of Natalie's brother pleading for people to get tested to save his sister.

"My big sister is my superhero," Sean says in the video. "Maybe you can be hers."

They even got Jackie Chan in on the search. The action movie star filmed a yet-to-be released public service announcement for Natalie while filming in Beijing, and gave her a shout-out on a recent tweet.