Health
Family pleads for help as teen faces life-threatening bone marrow failure
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A New York City father is desperately seeking a donor to save his teenage son’s life.
Max Uribe, now 15 and a high-school freshman, has just weeks until he will need to be hospitalized with a rare blood disorder that could lead to a deadly cancer.
“Max was just 6 when we first noticed there was something wrong with his blood counts,” his father, Juan Uribe, told Fox News Digital. “At the time, we thought it was due to a viral infection, but they never fully recovered back to their normal level.”
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In December 2024, Max’s condition grew worse, and he was diagnosed with clonal cytopenia, a condition involving the blood and bone marrow.
“All three of his blood counts are low — red, white and platelets,” Uribe said.
Max Uribe, pictured with his parents and sister, is in urgent need of a stem cell transplant to save his life. (Uribe Family)
In August 2025, another bone marrow biopsy revealed that Max is on a path to bone marrow failure, creating an urgent need for a stem cell transplant.
“The disease has continued to progress, as his blood counts continue to drop, and therefore, we have to take him to transplant in May of this year,” Uribe said.
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If left untreated, Max’s condition could lead to MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), a type of blood cancer, and from there possibly into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
A bone marrow match must have a specific type of HLA (human leukocyte antigen), which are proteins found on the surface of most cells in the body, according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).
Max Uribe, pictured with his parents, will be hospitalized for a transplant in May, as his blood count has been steadily decreasing. (Uribe Family)
The closer the donor’s HLA markers are to the patient’s, the more likely the body will accept the new cells without a high risk of complications.
People from the same ethnic background are more likely to share similar HLA types, meaning a patient is most likely to find a compatible donor among individuals with similar ancestry, per the NMDP.
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Non-Hispanic White patients have a 79% chance of a perfect match. That drops to 49% for Hispanic/Latino patients, 29% for Black patients and even lower for mixed ancestries, the NMDP reports.
Because Max is a “very rare combination” of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult, Uribe noted.
“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating.”
“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating,” he said. “The thinking is, we need large numbers if we’re going to have that perfect match for my son.”
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Max, who participates in competitive tennis and varsity wrestling, just had additional blood work done on Friday, which revealed that his counts continue to plummet.
“We’re at the point where this is beginning to manifest a bit more, which is why the urgency is so critical,” Uribe said.
Because Max is a “very rare combination” of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult. (Uribe Family)
If a donor is not secured by Max’s hospitalization in May, the medical team will have to proceed with a partial match, which is not ideal for a number of reasons.
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“The survival rate is meaningfully lower with a partial match, and there’s more risk of graft versus host disease (GVHD), which could lead to complications in the process,” Uribe said. With GVHD, the donor cells begin to attack the body.
Max Uribe, an active athlete, is on a path to bone marrow failure, requiring a stem cell transplant. (Uribe Family)
To help prevent this with a partial match, Max would likely need chemotherapy and immunosuppressants for a longer period of time, which could weaken his immune system.
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Anyone interested in donating can order a free test kit on the Team Max website. The kit includes a quick cheek swab that is sent back to the lab to determine whether someone is a match.
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Eliminating sugar from your diet may seem like the key to healthy eating, but research suggests it could have unintended effects on digestive health.
A study presented at ENDO 2026, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, suggests that a total lack of sucrose, or table sugar, may harm gut health and disrupt the body’s natural metabolism.
To explore how the total absence of dietary sugar impacts the body, researchers at the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait City conducted a 16-week study on two groups of mice. Both groups were placed on a low-fat diet, but with one critical difference.
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One group consumed a low-fat diet that included a standard amount of sucrose, while the other group ate a low-fat diet that was completely sugar-free, according to the study’s press release.
Throughout the trial, the scientists monitored a wide variety of physiological factors, including the animals’ weight, glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, hormone levels, internal inflammation and the specific composition of their gut bacteria.
A total lack of dietary sugar can cause imbalances in the gut bacteria and lead to signs of fatty liver disease, even without any weight gain, researchers said. (iStock)
The study outcome suggested that completely removing sugar caused several unexpected health problems.
“Completely removing sucrose from a low-fat diet may unexpectedly disrupt gut health and promote inflammation and metabolic dysfunction,” Rasheed Ahmad, principal scientist and head of the Immunology & Microbiology Department at the Dasman Diabetes Institute, said in the release.
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Even though the mice on the sugar-free diet did not gain any extra weight compared to the control group, their internal health indicators deteriorated.
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The animals that lacked sucrose developed an imbalance in their gut microbes and increased inflammation within the intestines and liver.
They also showed signs of poor glucose regulation, insulin resistance and cellular changes associated with fatty liver disease, according to the research.
Future dietary guidelines may shift away from strict, absolute sugar bans and instead focus on overall gut health through balanced nutrition. (iStock)
“The findings suggest that complete removal of sucrose from a low-fat diet may negatively affect gut microbiota and metabolic health,” Ahmad concluded.
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While the risks of high-sugar diets are well-established, the researchers noted that little attention has been given to the effects of completely eliminating sugar from low-fat meals.
Scientists say these new findings highlight that dietary carbohydrates play a valuable role in supporting balance between the immune system and the gut microbiome.
Completely cutting sucrose from a low-fat diet can unexpectedly trigger gut inflammation and disrupt the metabolism, experts say. (iStock)
Because this research was conducted on mice over a relatively short 16-week period, further clinical trials are necessary to determine whether a completely sugar-free diet causes the same gut and liver inflammation in humans.
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Additionally, the study focused specifically on removing sucrose from low-fat meals, meaning the results might not apply to people eliminating sugar while following higher-fat or ketogenic eating plans, the researchers noted.
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The team believes that future dietary guidelines may shift away from strict, absolute sugar restrictions and instead place a greater emphasis on maintaining a diverse, healthy population of gut bacteria through balanced nutrition.
“In the long term, these findings could help improve strategies for preventing and managing metabolic disorders, fatty liver disease and chronic inflammatory conditions,” Ahmad said.
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A cure for cancer could be on the horizon in the next decade, according to experts.
During the WSJ Leadership Institute CEO Summit in London last week, Johnson & Johnson Chairman and CEO Joaquin Duato reflected on the pharmaceutical company’s projections on the future of cancer treatment.
In the next 10 years, the goal is to “try to eliminate cancer,” Duato shared.
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“That’s a high goal, and we are already making significant progress in certain cancers,” he said.
Duato used multiple myeloma as an example, noting that the life expectancy is currently 10 years, when it was previously “only single years.”
Joaquin Duato, chairman and CEO of Johnson and Johnson, speaks at the Punchbowl News Conference at Union Station on March 10, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
“We have treatments now that utilize your own immune system to attack the cancer,” he said at the summit. “For patients who were already going into hospice, so they didn’t have any other alternative, they are [at] more than five years, with a single administration, in remission. That [is] spectacular.”
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“When patients see that, they cannot believe that because they have been coming to the hospital every week [for] a decade, having multiple therapies.”
The goal is to “try to eliminate cancer” in the next 10 years, the pharmaceutical executive said. (iStock)
According to Duato, Johnson & Johnson is working to understand the biology of cancer growth and to formulate new technologies to address it.
“It’s realistic to believe that we are going to cure certain cancers, and some others we’re going to turn into chronic diseases,” he predicted.
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“Cancer is an important thing – I cannot think about anybody who has not been touched by cancer,” he went on. “But there are many other opportunities for us to actually advance science, to address very important social problems.”
Duato called out dementia as another “important problem” in need of a solution.
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He predicted that life expectancy, which has risen steadily over the past century, will continue to increase as longevity technologies and solutions advance, improving quality of life along the way.
Duato commented that J&J has been optimistic about the role artificial intelligence will play in the future of healthcare, calling it a “force multiplier.”
Biomarkers and AI can help with the earlier diagnosis of cancer, as well as a more advanced and personalized approach to surgery, a doctor noted. (iStock)
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel agreed with Duato’s outlook on the future of cancer care, noting that certain cancers will turn into chronic diseases while others will find outright cures.
“Advances [will be] based on the use of AI to help guide targeted treatments with expanding knowledge of cancer mutations and how to target them,” he predicted, speaking to Fox News Digital.
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Siegel added that biomarkers and AI can help with earlier diagnoses, as well as a more advanced and personalized approach to surgery.
J&J recently acquired Firefly Bio, a biotech firm that produces drugs that enter cancer cells to “target certain proteins that contain difficult to treat gene mutations,” the doctor added.
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