Every year Hour Detroit publishes a list of the Top Doctors in metro Detroit. This year’s list contains more than 1000 physicians in 94 specialties — all nominated by their peers. With so many doctors at our fingertips we’d be remiss not to share some of their insights with you. Below is one of the eight interviews with a 2025 Top Doctor.
More Hour Detroit Top Doc Profiles
Amanda Kupstas, M.D. on Breast Health
Yusuke Terasaki, M.D. on Heart Health
Megan Pesch, M.D. on Pediatric Viruses
Dana Zakalik, M.D. on Gene Editing
Monique Swain, M.D. on Fertility Preservation for Breast Cancer Patients
Mohammed Najeeb Al Hallak, M.D. on Pancreatic Cancer Treatments
Christina Shanti, M.D. on How to Support Your Child Undergoing Surgery
You are on the Karmanos Cancer Institute’s Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Multidisciplinary Team. Can you tell us more about your work and those diseases?
Myeloma is a plasma cell cancer, and AL amyloidosis is a disease where the organ-damaging protein deposits are produced by abnormal (but not necessarily cancerous) plasma cells in the bone marrow. Our team at the Karmanos Cancer Institute has many ongoing and planned collaborations with other experts around the country exploring two aspects of myeloma risk. The first is genetic predisposition to developing the precursor condition MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance). There is some evidence that screening people for MGUS may translate into improved myeloma outcomes down the line, and this may be especially true for people at the highest risk for developing MGUS, the African American community. I am working with other members of the Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Multidisciplinary Team at Karmanos, Dr. Craig Cole and Dr. Lara Sucheston-Campbell, to develop a large-scale Detroit-based screening project. The other way to look at risk is to try to better understand why some people progress from MGUS to myeloma, while others do not.
What is something you wish more people understood about your profession?
When people find out I am a cancer specialist, a common response is “Wow, that must be so hard, so sad. I don’t know how you do that.” The truth is, it is one of the most gratifying specialties in medicine. Over the course of my career, the average survival of myeloma patients has more than tripled, from two to three years to over 10 years. But more importantly, more patients are feeling well during the course of their disease. To explain how far we have come in treating multiple myeloma, seven years ago, in March of 2018, I was part of a myeloma research fundraising trek to Everest base camp in Nepal with one of my patients, John Raithel. Five years after that, we did a second fundraiser together and trekked to Mount Kilimanjaro (he summited; I wasn’t able to). This year, on his 66th birthday, we went backpacking in Rocky Mountain National Park with another myeloma patient from Seattle who was a hiker on both the [Everest] and Kilimanjaro treks. All these hikes took place after John had undergone a stem cell transplant for his myeloma at Karmanos. I myself am a cancer survivor, and I know firsthand what it meant to me when my Karmanos oncologist said, “Your cancer is almost certainly cured.” Right now, I can’t say that to my myeloma and amyloidosis patients, so until I can, I’ll keep working to find new treatments.
This story originally appeared in the October 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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