Dr. David Fajgenbaum

It was sort of, I mean, if I think back on my life and these moments, like the moment when I got the call from my dad that my mom had brain cancer,

And the moment I was sitting in the hospital room and my doctor explaining to me that the only drug that had ever been studied for my disease wasn't working and that there was nothing else.

And I was just searching for something like, is there a gene or a protein or a cell or something that we might know about this thing?

Like, give me something, like begging for like some lead.

And he just was clear, there's nothing, like nothing.

You are going to die from this disease.

The chemotherapy is going to stop working.

And there is nothing out there.

That was when everything changed.

Everything in me shifted.

If I want to survive, like if I want to spend more time with this girl beside me that I love, Caitlin, and I want to get married to her one day, I want to spend more time with my family, like I've got to activate.

And it was right around that time I was learning about how a drug that was being used for Castleman's was also working for other diseases.

And I was like, wait a minute.

There's a Castleman's drug working for other diseases.

Is there anything somewhere?

Maybe there's another drug for another disease that could work for me.

Like it just is sort of like this very simple concept.

And frankly, it was the only path.

It wasn't like I was like, oh, it would be great to do this or to do that.

It was like this was the only path was to find an existing medicine.