He has leukemia, needs $ 500,000 treatment, and sells crypto art to pay for it

The Argentinian heart could be called the Instagram account of Luis Arregui Henk or Lajos (29), as his friends call him. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, but his father is Argentinian and his mother Hungarian. After several twists and unforeseen personal events, he landed in Argentina in 2010 to study agricultural engineering at UCA and start a new life. He received himself, started working on his own business and in 2019 life gave him the hardest and most unexpected blow: She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Suddenly, Lajos’ life collapsed. The first symptoms were fatigue, shortness of breath and her face started to look paler than normal.. It was one day while riding a bicycle that he realized that something was wrong: he saw a tunnel, felt dizzy and fell. “The doctors explained to me that there was no way to predict the disease, it was as if I had been struck by lightning,” said Lajos, currently hospitalized in the Italian hospital.

Although having responded well, initially, to treatment and reducing the disease to a residual minimum – when it is no longer detectable in the body – doctors told him that a bone marrow transplant was needed. He waited months for a donor to arrive who never showed up, and it was his own mother who ultimately donated his bone marrow.

“My marrow is quite unique and it only happened that there was a compatible person in the world, they contacted her but at the last minute she canceled, she said she didn’t want to do it” , said Lajos.

The transplant with her mother was successful, but months later and the quarantine, symptoms of rot reappeared and the doctors told her they had not been able to fight the disease at all and offered her three alternatives: do nothing and wait for the disease to subside, get a more compatible bone marrow, or travel to the United States for special treatment: the Car T cell.

the Car T cell It’s a very specific treatment where they extract T cells – a type of immune cell – and genetically alter them and then inject them back into the body so they can treat this particular leukemia.

The treatment has an approximate value of $ 500,000 and is so high because it is an innovative therapy that it also requires time and dedicated professional teams around the clock. The Lajos has already received various donations, but he is still a long way from obtaining that sum of money. To do this, he made the decision to start selling crypto art.

“I made what is called a collection in the NFT world. It would be a number of works that are part of a collection devoted to one thing. For example, my collection is dedicated to paying for my cancer treatment, ”he explains.

During his internship, Lajos studied programming and 3D art and the result was the birth of his own collection of 50 digital works, which he already sells on the NFT market.

An NFT or non-fungible token is 100% digital. It could be a work of art, a video, a musical composition or any other item that can be sold like bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In the case of art, it is an original way of digitizing works and selling them in a new market, also a more secure method.

The money Luis gets for his treatment will go to another patient if a matched bone marrow donor appears first. “All the money I earn from this collection and donation campaign will devote 100% to cancer treatmentwhether it’s me or someone else, ”he promised.

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