Lee May, a resident of Santa Cruz, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma 14 years ago after experiencing bone pain and fatigue. Despite initial reassurances from friends that his symptoms were minor, medical tests at UCSF Health confirmed the presence of this aggressive blood cancer.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t know what it was,” May said.
Doctors initially gave him a prognosis of two to four years. Since then, May has undergone several treatments including drug regimens, a stem cell transplant, and CAR-T therapy.
“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.”
Jeffrey Wolf, M.D., a hematologist and oncologist at UCSF who specializes in blood and bone marrow cancers, has overseen May’s care. Alongside Thomas Martin, M.D., Wolf co-founded the UCSF Multiple Myeloma Program—the largest program for this disease 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.”
Multiple myeloma is recognized as the second most common blood cancer in the country. When May began treatment in 2012 with an RVD drug cocktail (lenalidomide, bortezomib, dexamethasone), doctors hoped for five years without relapse; he experienced two and a half years before needing further intervention.
For eight more years he cycled through various therapies until another relapse led him to receive CAR-T therapy—specifically ciltacabtagene autoleucel—in 2023 at UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights. This treatment uses modified immune cells to target cancer cells.
“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 presented data showing that about one-third of patients receiving this single-infusion therapy remained alive and progression-free after five or more years without additional treatment.
Wolf noted these outcomes were significant given the historically poor outlook for multiple myeloma patients: “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 his CAR-T treatment and remains active in his community as leader of the local support group for multiple myeloma patients.
“I’m still here,” he says. “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.”
