Tomorrow, although the dancing will have stopped, the spirit of raising cancer awareness will still be in full swing.

A drive will be held in the HUB-Robeson Center in an effort to find a bone marrow match for 14-year-old Amy Katz from Pittsburgh.

The drive, called MarrowThon II, was founded by friends of Katz, who was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia in 2003. The group, called Amy's Army, will co-sponsor the drive with the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon.

Students involved with Thon helped Amy's Army with its drive when it came to Penn State two years ago, said Diana Gallo (senior-communications sciences and disorders), Thon's special assistant for logistics. Gallo said Amy's Army will bring all of the necessary supplies, and Penn State student volunteers with help them run the drive.

"We're staffing it, but they are mainly bringing everything they need," Gallo said.

The drive will take place from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. tomorrow in room 129 of the HUB.

The goal of Amy's Army is to find a bone marrow match and donor for Amy.

"The only known cure is a bone marrow transplant," said Amy's mother, Lisa Katz.

Out of the almost 9 million people internationally registered as bone marrow donors, a match for Amy has not been found yet. For a transplant to occur, the donor and the recipient must be a perfect match. Both of Amy's sisters were tested, but neither was a perfect match for her, Katz said.

To date, Amy's army has registered more than 7,000 people from several different states to the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry.

To donate, potential donors between ages 18 and 60 must sign a consent form and then have their cheek swabbed to collect the needed DNA.

"It's not just for Amy anymore," Katz said. "There are matches out there to be found." The donors that have registered so far by Amy's Army yielded 13 matches within the registry.

One match was made with Bob Fay, who graduated from Penn State in 2004. "It was actually a really empowering experience," said Fay, who was involved with Thon during his time at Penn State. "I felt very happy to do it."

He donated stem cells, not bone marrow, so his procedure involved being hooked up to a machine for four hours that took his blood, removed the stem cells and then put his blood back into his body.

"This is something that you individually can do that will completely alter someone else's life," Fay said.

A required consent form can be downloaded at the Amy's Army Web site, www.amysarmy.org, and filling it out in advance will cut time out of the process, which takes about 15 minutes in total. The Web site also features the answers to "frequently asked questions" about the donating process.

At its first drive at Penn State two years ago, Amy's Army registered four to five hundred people.

"Getting the word out is half our battle," Katz said.

She added that one important thing is to be educated about the donation process before registering.

The organization would not want to have people commit and then back out if a match were to be found, Katz said.

"If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you've got to add more needles to the haystack," Katz said.