Dr. Nam Dang talks in his lab last month at the Nevada Cancer Institute in Las Vegas. Photo by John Locher.

On Dr. Nam Dang's first date with the woman who would become his wife, he made one thing perfectly clear: The courtship would be short-lived.

"I told her that unless she planned to marry me, there was no reason wasting any time,'' said Dang, chief of hematological malignancies at the Nevada Cancer Institute. "I was a very busy man, and I had no time for fun.''

Dang's approach worked, and though it's the subject of some workplace ribbing, Dang is indeed serious about his work. He treats 80 to 100 lymphoma patients from across the country while researching new drugs and treatment methods for often aggressive forms of cancer.

"Lymphoma is something I go to sleep thinking about. It is what I am thinking about when I wake,'' Dang said.

"I see so many patients who are suffering and dying from it that it weighs on me,'' Dang said. "Many times I will walk the hallways, and family members of my patients will stop and hug me. That's what keeps me going. That's what drives me. I want people to feel better.''

Dang escaped Vietnam with his family at the age of 12. The family lived in California for a while before moving to relatives in Dallas, where he taught himself English, mostly by listening to the radio.

Dang said his yearning to become a physician began while he was in Vietnam, where he saw the pain and suffering of people who were not receiving adequate medical care. He wanted to change that.

Within a year or two of moving to Dallas, Dang was enrolled in high school.

Though he knew little English, he excelled and was named valedictorian of his class. The next year, he found himself at Harvard University where he later graduated magna cum laude.

He earned the same honors from Harvard University's Medical School. He did his post-graduate work at Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship at Dana Farbar Cancer Institute, both affiliates of Harvard University.

In all, Dang spent 18 years in the Harvard system before moving on to one of the nation's premier cancer facilities, the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Institute. There, he began to focus on lymphoma, a group of cancers that form in the lymphatic system.

And it was at MD Anderson that the idea of coming to Nevada occurred to him. He was seeing patients at the facility who came there from Las Vegas and Reno.

"I remember asking one of them why they were coming to Houston,'' he said. "They said it was because there wasn't an academic center (in Nevada) and that, once a disease reached a certain point, there wasn't any treatment available.''

One of those patients, a casino executive, was suffering from an aggressive form of lymphoma.

The patient would fly to Houston every three weeks, spend three or four days receiving treatment, then return to Las Vegas.

Though he could afford to make the trip, Dang wondered about the less fortunate and where they went given the same illness.

He also thought about the casino executive's nonexistent family support.

"When it comes to cancer treatment, especially one that is as aggressive as what he had, patients often do best when their loved one is next to them,'' he said.

"I thought, there's a lot of potential for someone to do good there (in Nevada) and, given the size of the patient population, the impact I could make could probably be greater than at MD Anderson where, in the facility alone, we had 300 oncologists.

"In this city, I am told, there are only about 50.''

While Nevada was in his mind, Dang happened to be in the mind of Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang, director of the Nevada Cancer Institute. Vogelzang recruited Dang and, in the spring, Dang brought his wife and two children to Las Vegas.

"He's a natural," Vogelzang said. "He is what we call a triple threat in the academic world. He can teach, do patient care and he does research."

At the institute, Dang is working on a project he's been undertaking for the past 20 years, a drug that has the potential to destroy cancer cells.

Dang began working on the drug while earning his Ph.d. at Harvard. At the time, he discovered that a particular protein -- CD26 -- played an important role in cancer cell development. So he began working with drugs that could potentially target that protein.

Sometime in the next six months, he plans to submit an application for Federal Food and Drug Administration approval to use the drug in human clinical trials.

"I started this when I was 21. Now I'm 43 and just getting it to the point for clinical trials,'' he said. "Not many people can take what they've worked on as a graduate student and make it work. It is quite gratifying to get to this point.''

Once the drug undergoes clinical trials and, if it proves effective in the treatment of cancer, Dang could apply for a new drug application with the FDA.

That process probably would take another 10 years.

"By that time, my hair will totally be gray,'' he said, laughing as he sat behind his desk decorated with books, magazines and pamphlets on cancer.

Some of Dang's patients can attest to the same type of straightforwardness he had that day long ago with his future bride.

Bob Fitzwilson, 58, of San Francisco learned about Dang late last year after being diagnosed with lymphoma and a series of failed treatments.

"I called everyone I knew about who is doing cutting-edge treatment, and I was given Dang's name,'' he said by telephone last week.

Fitzwilson met Dang in January.

"I learned more in the first three hours with him than I had in the entire four months I had cancer,'' said Fitzwilson, an investment counselor. "He was brutally honest from day one, and my wife and I were desperate for someone to give us the facts.

"He told me, 'You're in the garbage can.' I asked him why, and he said the type of cancer I had -- peripheral T-cell lymphoma -- was hard to identify," Fitzwilson said. "It was very complicated but he explained it to me in a way that I could understand. Then he told me what my options were.''

Fitzwilson said he visited Dang again in May to go over those options. Three weeks ago, he began his first treatment.

"The fact that I had to go outside California speaks volumes about my experience in California, but it's not just about what is or isn't available there. I believe there's an institutional bias toward doing things the old way,'' Fitzwilson said about Dang. "It can be very depressing to try and get simple information from doctors these days. Before I met Dr. Dang, I felt like I was on a conveyer belt, more like a lab rat than a human being.''

Despite all the drugs and methods available for cancer treatment, Dang says the best approach is to catch the disease in its early stages.

As a suggestion to his patients, and those who aren't, Dang says people should seek out a specialist.

"If you want a McDonald's hamburger, you're not going to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken,'' he said. "So, why settle when it's a life or death situation.''