ABOVE: Mount Sinai Hospital researchers Samir Parekh and Deepak Perumal use DNA and RNA sequencing to help find new combinations of existing treatments for cancer patients.
MOUNT SINAI HEALTH SYSTEM
At first, Stuart Harshbarger thought he’d injured his back lifting furniture and boxes. When the pain started, in 2008, “we’d just moved from Detroit to New York,” he explains. But the pain was excruciating, so the then 45-year-old international management consultant saw a doctor, who tested him for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that often causes back pain. He got the results by phone while on a business trip in Germany, and was “scared to death,” he remembers.
In the decade since, Harshbarger’s odyssey has been typical of that of many multiple myeloma patients—though he’s made it past the median survival time for the disease, six years. He’s been through a series of standard treatments, most of which worked for some ...
