New UAMS treatment for Myeloma at UAMS

Little Rock, Arkansas – For the first time in Arkansas, a new cutting-edge treatment for Multiple Myeloma patients at UAMS, the first of its kind.

In 2008, Dave Puente was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. He lives in California, but he and his wife started traveling to UAMS in Little Rock for treatment.

Following years of treatment and a stem cell transplant, he was in remission, until it returned, and the treatment wasn’t working. “I was just running out of options,” Dave Puente said.

Dave became the first myeloma patient in Arkansas to receive the treatment. “The results have been amazing. I’m cancer-free at this point. The cancer was not detected in my body within a week of the treatment,” Puente said.

The new chimeric antigen receptor t-cell immunotherapy uses the patient’s own immune cells, so they don’t have to rely on chemotherapy. “The patient’s immune cells are being collected and then sent to a facility where the cells are genetically altered in a way that they can recognize and attack the patient’s myeloma cells,” Dr. Frits Van Rhee with UAMS said.

The cells are frozen and shipped back to the treatment facility. They are infused and they rapidly find the myeloma cells and kill the tumor. “The treatment is very impressive that it puts patients into remission,” Dr. Rhee said.

Dave now looks forward to walking his daughter down the aisle this summer, which is something he once worried he wouldn’t be able to do. “I feel freer. I can look at a future more long term that I didn’t have before,” Puente said.