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New Hope

Romeo’s first battle with breast cancer followed a familiar path. Her mammogram revealed a cancerous tumor, and her treatment was fairly standard—surgery to remove the lump, then radiation and five years of the hormone therapy drug tamoxifen. 

She was cancer-free for nearly two decades before a tender spot on the same breast prompted concern from her doctor.  Romeo’s recent mammogram had shown no sign of cancer, so her doctor did an ultrasound. The test revealed she had triple-negative breast cancer: a difficult-to-detect, aggressive, and invasive type of cancer with limited treatment options and a poor outlook.

Again, Romeo followed a standard course of treatment: a partial mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation. But when her doctor found a cancerous lump on her neck, oncologists at DCC knew she needed a different plan of action.

“I felt like things would be OK, but they weren’t,” Romeo says. “I didn’t have many options.”
Although the circumstances were daunting, the timing was fortuitous—Linda Vahdat, MD, section chief of medical oncology at DCC, was starting phase II of a copper depletion clinical trial to treat triple-negative breast cancer. Enrolled in December 2024, Romeo was the first person to begin the treatment: an anti-copper drug compound called tetrathiomolybdate (TM). By reducing Romeo’s copper levels, Vahdat hopes to remove the resources these cancer cells need to grow and spread.
“Dr. Vahdat is wonderful, confident, and compassionate. She’s part of a tremendous team,” says  Romeo, who lives in Keene, New Hampshire, and travels about two hours round-trip to visit Vahdat in Lebanon, N.H. “I was hesitant about the trial, but I trust them. Their care is fantastic.” 

She has regular lab work to ensure she is getting the right dosage, or “recipe,” as she calls it, which sometimes needs adjustments. “I am a little science experiment,” Romeo says. “Hopefully it will help me and then help others.”