February 21, 2008

Dear Haniger Family,

On behalf of Stanford Blood Center and the HLA, Immunogentics & Disease Profiling Laboratory, I would like to express my condolences to your family and those whose lives were touched by June Haniger. As a blood donor to Rose Payne and her research team at Stanford in the late 1960s, she helped propel the field of histocompatibility into the 21^st century. The work done in those laboratories laid the groundwork for transfusion and transplant compatibility testing. If not for family studies, like those done with the Haniger family, we could not understand the complexity of tissue typing. Donations made by June Haniger helped define the HLA system the way we know it today. Thousands of lives have been saved or improved by the work done by that team of researchers, and made possible by blood donors like June Haniger.

Our laboratory now has 40 full-time staff and does testing for all of the solid organ and bone marrow transplants at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and Lucile Packard ChildrenÕs Hospital. It is because of the individuals like June that made all of this possible and made the field of transplantation as successful as it is today.

We are incredibly thankful for her contributions.

Regards,

Michele Hyndman

Community Relations Manager