Diane Banck was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma back in 2016. But now, she can say these three words:
“I’m cancer free,” said Banck.
It’s a great feeling after a long journey. When Diane got her original diagnosis nearly 10 years ago, she underwent a stem cell transplant.
Then in 2023, her cancer started coming back. She needed another treatment option.
What is CAR-T-Cell Therapy?
“She had four lines of therapy prior to seeing me, so the obvious next step would be to do the CAR-T-cell therapy,” said Waqas Jehangir, MD, hematology and transplant specialist with Avera Cancer Institute. “CAR-T-cell therapy is a chimeric antigen receptor therapy.”
It uses a patient’s cells to find and fight cancer cells.
“Basically it is collecting your own T cell and then we send them to our pharmaceutical company. They activate those cells and send them back to us and we give those cells back to the patient. These cells are activated in a way that they can kill the myeloma cells,” said Jehangir.
So in 2024, she was able to do CAR-T-cell therapy.
“In February, it was actually Valentine’s Day, was when they took my cells out and they had to ship them to New York to be processed, and then March 27th, I got them put back in,” said Banck. “I was tired, but it was a lot easier than the stem cell transplant.”
Treatment Success
She’s now in remission, but continues to meet with her doctor to make sure everything is in check.
“I still see her every three months, right now I have not been doing any further bone marrow biopsies, only monitoring her with blood work,” said Jehangir.
“He is amazing and his team is very very good,” said Banck.
Learn more about cancer treatment options at Avera.
