Be the Match is coming to downtown DeKalb Thursday to benefit cancer patients in need of bone marrow.

A registration event for Be the Match will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at O’Leary’s Restaurant and Pub, 260 E. Lincoln Highway. Be the Match is a national registry for bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC). The registry is designed to benefit cancer patients who are unable to find a match within their family. Betsy Ward, district manager of the North Central region for Be the Match, said only 30 percent of patients are able to find matches in their families. This is the second Be the Match event held by O’Leary’s.

“Be the Match is a national registry that tries to help patients who have things like leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cells, but mostly blood cancers or blood disorders find a marrow cell match and a marrow cell transplant,” said Taylor Seemuth, Be the Match recruiter at the Rock River Valley Blood Center, 419 N. Sixth St. in Rockford.

Donations are encouraged at the event to help fund Be the Match.

“It takes up to 3,500 potential donors to find a non-family match,” said Debbie Witmer, co-owner of O’Leary’s. “It’s really difficult to find them.”

There are about 10.5 million potential donors on the Be the Match registry. More than 55,000 transplants have been the product of this program as of October 2012.

The inside of the mouth is rubbed by a cotton swab to determine DNA upon registration. Signing up for the registry is a commitment to donate if a match is found.

Extracting PBSC is a non-surgical process; PBSC is extracted about 70 percent of the time. PBSC is similar to plasma donation, and an IV is inserted into each arm and blood flows through a machine.

“We do that up at the blood center in Rockford,” Seemuth said. “It’s pretty quick and we keep them entertained.”

The bone marrow transplant procedure is a surgical procedure.

“It’s much advanced from many years ago,” Ward said. “It’s a needle aspiration into the soft marrow of the hip.”

Be the Match started 25 years ago to benefit a daughter of a Navy serviceman.

“Right now, only half of the patients who need a transplant receive one,” Seemuth said. “Although it might sound like [10.5] million people is a great number and everything, unfortunately we still need more people to ensure that everybody who needs a transplant can get one.”