The Houchin Community Blood Bank has announced it’s holding a community blood drive Saturday to support a Valencia High School student diagnosed with leukemia.
After Pedro Roman, 17, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2019, a large outcropping of support was seen across the Santa Clarita Valley: His football teammates shaved their heads in solidarity with their friend, who was heading into chemotherapy treatments; a GoFundMe page was set up to help the family with medical costs; and dozens of people hosted a drive-by celebration of Roman for his birthday.
Roman, however, has had to return to the hospital after a recent relapse in his cancer, which had spread to his spine and brain, said his mother, Lizette. The young Viking is set to undergo further chemotherapy and CAR T-cell therapy, a process by which T-cells are taken from the patient’s blood, altered, and then reintroduced with the capacity to latch onto a specific antigen on the patient’s tumor cells and kill them.
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