Lee May was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a serious blood cancer, 14 years ago after experiencing bone pain and fatigue. Initially given a prognosis of two to four years, May has undergone various treatments at UCSF Health, including drug regimens, a stem cell transplant, and most recently CAR-T therapy.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t know what it was,” May said about his initial diagnosis.
Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer. May’s first treatment in 2012 involved a combination of lenalidomide, bortezomib, and dexamethasone (RVD), followed by a stem cell transplant. Despite hopes that this would keep his cancer at bay for five years, remission lasted only two and a half years. Over the next eight years, he tried several drug therapies as relapses occurred.
“Every time I relapsed, there would be a new course of therapy, a new drug would be available,” he said. “My survival relates directly to NIH (National Institutes of Health) research and funding. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be here. Science moves forward with NIH funding.”
His physician Jeffrey Wolf, M.D., is a hematologist-oncologist at UCSF who co-founded the UCSF Multiple Myeloma Program with Thomas Martin, M.D., making it the largest program of its kind in the western United States.
“For decades, I thought we would never make progress,” Wolf said. “It took a long time to get a handle on this disease. But what we are doing now has grown out of all our laboratory and clinical work.”
In 2023, after another relapse, May received ciltacabtagene autoleucel—a form of CAR-T therapy approved by the FDA in 2022 for adults whose multiple myeloma had returned or resisted other treatments. This therapy modifies patients’ immune cells to target cancer cells; May received one infusion followed by two weeks of monitoring at UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights.
“This is really cutting-edge stuff,” May said. “The shot is one and done which is so wonderful. You can’t talk to a cancer patient who doesn’t want a break from treatment.”
At the June 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, researchers reported that about one-third of patients receiving this one-time CAR-T therapy were alive and progression-free five or more years later.
Wolf described these results as remarkable for an illness historically associated with poor outcomes: “It’s incredible that we are now able to cure diseases that we could never cure before,” he said. “This is the future: to cure cancer with a single shot. None of this could have been developed without NIH support all these years.”
May has been in remission since receiving CAR-T therapy and remains active in his community near Santa Cruz. He leads a local support group for multiple myeloma patients and continues outdoor activities like hiking and cycling.
“I’m still here,” he said. “I feel very lucky. I never thought I’d live to see my kids get married or see my grandchildren. However long this lasts, I’ll take it.”
