Dr. David Fajgenbaum

And that became just my central focus.

So what do you do?

Yeah.

So first thing I did is I went to my mentor, Arthur Rubenstein.

He was the dean of the medical school before and he just retired.

And so I went to him for advice and his support.

And he said, David, I'll support you.

And he's been amazing over these years.

But I wanted to go to someone who sort of like could give me advice.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I need a team.

I need people.

I need to build a team, exactly.

It was like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I need to build a team.

So first went to Arthur, he came on board.

The second task would be to understand what was going on in my blood and in my immune system and see if there was something that was already approved for another disease that could maybe be repurposed to treat me.

And that's when I, you know, I guess they did the equivalent of, you know, covering my walls and poster boards for throwing the football.

And it just became all encompassing.

I got to find a drug for this disease.

I remember turning to Gina, my sister and saying, gee, I need you to call UNC and Duke.