By Cedars Sinai –
In July, Nick Mondek, MD, drove his healthy 9-year-old son Stephen to Cedars-Sinai on an important mission: To donate stem cells that might cure Mondek’s deadly blood cancer. Stephen’s donation would give Mondek a brand-new immune system—and make Stephen the hospital’s youngest-known stem cell donor.
“A donation from a child this young is very rare,” said Hoyoung Chung, DO, a critical care pediatrician at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s. “Stephen was very brave, and our team made sure everything went perfectly so that this young boy could help his father.”
Mondek, an anesthesiologist who works in the Los Angeles area, was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that affects the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, in 2022. A stem cell transplant from his brother, a perfect genetic match, sent him into remission, but Mondek’s cancer returned in April of this year.
