For more information about Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Myeloma Institute, click here or visit the UHealth Collective:
When business owner Richard Dapaah suffered severe back pain while in Italy with his wife, he never imagined it was cancer.
“So, I ended up on the floor for a number of hours and was taken out of the house in a stretcher,” Dapaah said.
The now 55-year-old had multiple myeloma. He traveled to meet with Ola Landgren, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Myeloma Institute.
“Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer. Risk factors for multiple myeloma are not entirely clear. It has been found for many years that people with African American descent have a higher risk of being diagnosed. Also, the age of onset could be 10 years younger. The treatment for multiple myeloma has changed quite a lot. We use immunotherapies that refer to antibodies, antibodies that are designed to find proteins expressed on the surface of myeloma cells. We also use small molecules that can be, for example, blockers of certain pathways or certain functions in the cells,” Dr. Landgren said.
Rather than treating Dapaah with chemotherapy, Dr. Landgren put him in a clinical trial using a 3-drug regimen to attack the cancer cells. The goal was to get him to where the disease was undetectable.
“There was no chemotherapy involved, and we also had minimal residual disease, or MRD detection as part of the trial. That meant that we could actually treat Richard until he’d reached that point when there was no detectable disease,” Dr. Landgren said.
The Sylvester Myeloma Institute is at the forefront of precision medicine.
“Better profiling of individual patient’s disease and individual patient’s immune system, that is a critical piece going forward, and that’s something we are working on,” Dr. Landgren said.
Dapaah is off treatment and jumping rope - something he never thought he could do again!
“Coming back to it has been surprisingly easy and pain free,” Dapaah said.
He now feels great and tied the knot in Italy last year! He’s grateful to have found Dr. Landgren and travels to Miami from Tennessee to be monitored at Sylvester Myeloma Institute.
“I always felt like if I could get to someone like Dr. Landgren and do what I was told then we’d have the best chance at fighting the disease,” Dapaah said.
FOCUSING ON YOU
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