About Ant Lab DNA, LLC

---

It’s hard to tell where this story begins and where it will end. According to many others, I often bury the lead. So, at the outset, I need to say that Amanda Caster, Ph.D., my sister,  passed away after a brutal battle with first lymphoma and then leukemia on January 4, 2015. We were 18-months apart and lived a lifelong journey of sisterhood placing us at odds and in arms in myriad ways over the years. Amanda was the older sister. Her conduct was commensurate with her first-born status. I consider Mandy’s anthem to have been, “I’m in a Hurry but Don’t Know Why.” She prophesized an early death by her mid-teens… I have no idea why, but she never considered living to an old age. She lived her life like she was on borrowed time. Boy, Mandy was smart. Unfortunately, she knew it, and that made for a formidable foe when it came to arguing. Mandy rushed through high school to leave early and begin attending Rochester University as a freshman in college. She then expediently made her way through college (ultimately at Antioch in Ohio) and landed in a Ph.D. program at Emory University studying Neuroscience. She spent most of her time in labs doing research. Conducting research and running experiments was the ideal fit for her perfectionism, diligence, and attention to detail. While living in Atlanta, she began having unusual shoulder pain and a cough. As was typical for my sister, she ignored the pain. It took quite some time for her to seek medical attention and in approximately 2013 she was diagnosed with lymphoma. She decided to attack the disease with full force and underwent extensive chemotherapy and radiation. At a time when her health was quite perilous and she was in the ICU at a hospital in Atlanta, she was awarded her doctorate in Neuroscience. She recovered and was well on the mend (riding her mountain back daily upwards of 20-30 miles) and contemplating medical school when she fell ill again. This time it was leukemia. Hope was not lost though because treatment was an option. My sister needed a bone marrow donor. So, I should add here that Mandy was fascinated by the double helix and DNA. Much of her research focused on heritable illnesses and potential treatments. 

As children, Mandy gave me the nickname of “Spare Parts.” She called me Spare Parts because she believed that that’s why our parents had me in the first place. They didn’t want her to be an only child, and they wanted a second set of organs in case Mandy needed something. Needless to say, Mandy was an unusual child. She started as a scientist very early on and developed unique interest spanning from the Periodic Table of Elements to ant species to mold growth (all in the comfort of her childhood bedroom). She was such an enthusiast of the computer game Ant Farm that she made her AOL messenger name, AntChild. This was rather fitting because she was petite and far stronger than anyone ever estimated her to be. Ants are tiny and have more than 4 times their strength than their mass. Mandy was and always will be AntChild to me. So, as you can imagine, I knew that if I ever did something for Mandy, it would involve her curious mind’s amalgamation of ants, labs, and DNA. That’s where the name Ant Lab DNA comes from. 

Let me say more about DNA and Spare Parts… Mandy needed a bone marrow transplant. There was a large registry already in place and none of the candidates were a close enough match. So, without her even asking, I volunteered to be tested for bone marrow donor candidacy. It’s funny that I can’t remember the precise details of how we learned that I was a perfect match, but I remember Mandy and I speaking with a representative of the bone marrow donor process and her asking questions about if she would legally own my DNA. “How bizarre?” I thought. My sister would die without a transplant, and she was wondering if my marrow would be her property legally. This conversation went on a surprisingly long time, and it was determined that she would physically and legally own whatever bone marrow I donated. So, over the course of several weeks, I gave myself injections in my stomach to encourage bone marrow growth. I experienced pain in the strangest of places like at the base of my skull, my pelvis, and even my femurs. I didn’t mind the pain… it made me feel like I was helping. I don’t remember the year, but I remember the month that my bone marrow was donated. It was in November. I was on one floor of the hospital, and she was on another. They took the marrow from me and walked it down to her room and started the transfusion. I had some complications so I couldn’t follow the bag down to her, but when I finally did make it to her, she was laying back in her hospital bed, her hair gone, her body emaciated, but she had a big, bright smile on her face. She looked at me, then the bag, and said, “That’s mine.” I laughed and told her she could keep it. 

Unfortunately, it turned out that we were too close of a genetic match and several months later, her leukemia returned. She was matched with another donor and made it 100 days post donation, then she relapsed. There were no more treatments possible. Mandy wasn’t going to make it. So, as I started this story, Mandy passed away January 4, 2015. But she had plans for me. Before she died, she created a list of things she wished she had done during her life, and she assigned them to me. She didn’t hold back on the challenges I would have to face, but they would take me hundreds of miles on mountain bike adventures, flights around the world, and more that I’ll happily share later. 

I remember that after Mandy passed, the world stopped spinning. Everything came to a halt. My whole sense of who I was lost context. I had always been me in the context of Mandy. Shortly after her passing, if I said that my sister had passed away, I was usually met with the question, “Did she have kids?” I found this question to be extremely offensive at first. Were they wondering if she left a legacy of DNA? Were they saying that maybe her death “wasn’t so bad” because she wasn’t a mother? It always frustrated me, but now, I really wish she had left children. I would have poured every ounce of my love for her into them. However, that was not our story. This past January marked the 10-year death anniversary of Amanda Caster. It hit me hard. I had not completed her list (and was nowhere close to checking things off) but felt that Mandy’s tenacious and adventurous and curious spirit needed a way to live on. A legacy for both of us; and so emerged Ant Lab DNA. Perhaps nothing will ever come of this project, but following a mission Mandy would have designed, we hope to bring an Ant Lab DNA ethos to reality.