Three members of the UNC football team – Tommy Bancroft, Kyle Murphy and Nick Weiler – helped to save the lives of cancer patients by donating platelets Monday at the UNC Blood Donation Center.
Platelets are the clotting component of blood. The primary recipients of the platelets donated at the UNC Blood Donation Center are patients at the UNC Cancer Hospital. (Some forms of cancer impair the ability of a patient’s bone marrow to produce platelets, and chemotherapy can also cause significant damage to platelet-producing marrow cells.) Without enough platelets, cancer patients can experience life-threatening bleeding.