DEERFIELD, Ill., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ — Astellas Pharma US,
Inc. has announced the winners of the second 2010 Transplant
Scholars Awards, which awarded a dozen $5,000 educational
scholarships to transplant recipients and living donors from around
the country to help them pursue their educational goals and gain
even more power to make a real difference in the lives of the
people around them. Scholarship winners were chosen from among 283
entries by a panel of judges who evaluated the essays on the level
of hope, courage and achievement that the entrants
demonstrated.
“We planned to award five scholarships this year,” said
Charlotte Berlin, Senior Product Director, Immunology, for
Astellas. “However, once we started reading, we were so gripped by
the stories of the challenges these students have overcome and
their drive to give back–from advocating for the rights of
others, to working in the medical field to delivering teddy bears
to sick kids, that there was no way to stop at five.”
Astellas wishes the following winners the best as they
take on new academic challenges and make the world a better place
in their own unique ways:
Kyla-Tana Aquino, kidney recipient from Rancho Cordova,
CAKyla-Tana was 15 years old when she was diagnosed with
end-stage renal failure and learned she needed a kidney transplant.
Luckily, Kyla-Tana’s parents were both generous donors. She
received her first kidney from her father and six years later,
received a kidney from her mother. Generosity runs in the Aquino
family, and Kyla-Tana also gave back to the transplant community
through a children’s book about her experiences called “Kyla’s
Kidney Adventure.” The book was distributed through the National
Kidney Foundation to educate others of her kidney disease. More
recently, Kyla-Tana co-led a public relations campaign for Donate
Life California to increase organ donation awareness on her campus.
Now, Kyla-Tana is enrolled in a Master’s program at
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