Immune Therapies - Available for you - Now!
A rational approach is providing a new medical alternative for the treatment of cancer.
By harnessing the innate powers of the body’s immune system, immunotherapy treatments have the potential to achieve complete, long-lasting remissions and cures for all types of cancer.
Our experience: For 3 years, we’ve helped patients access special immune therapies – often achieving exceptional outcomes!
All patients can take advantage of immune therapy as a value add to other treatments or in some cases, a standalone treatment.
However: When patients ask their doctors about immune therapies, in our experience, they are usually told about drug based immune therapies and not blood or blood tumour-based vaccines which are available through our international immunology-oncology colleagues.
Experimental you may think – but more than 10,000 clients have passed through the doors of our referred clinic since the early 1990’s?
These types of immune therapies are made from your own harvested immune cells.
The key here is the quality of cells produced, expertise and technique and a long history using vaccines with significant numbers of patients. This is why WE ONLY REFER OUR PATIENTS TO ONE CLINIC.
Comparing the two main types of cancer immune therapies:
Drug based immune therapies:
These are now available worldwide – sometimes provided on Medical Trials and sometimes on a pay per dose basis.
These types of drug-based immune therapies have demonstrated some outstanding successes particularly in Melanoma.
Importantly; severe,unpredictable side effects, sometimes fatal are being reported in the medical literature.
Anti PD1 drugs designed to unleash the immune system, strip a protein (PD1) from the surface of cancer cells, making them more likely to be discovered by the immune system and destroyed.
However, the target is proven to be unreliable, with many patients experiencing their own immune system attacking vital organs as well – instead of their cancer.
Severe Side effects: Checkpoint inhibition is associated with a unique spectrum of side effects termed immune-related adverse events (irAEs).
A recent paper found that 30 percent of patients experienced “interesting, rare or unexpected side effects,” with a quarter of reactions described as severe, life-threatening or requiring hospitalisation
Positive outcomes: In melanoma and a few select cancers including non small cell lung cancer there have been amazing responses.
The downside is, the patient’s immune system may become highly unpredictable – causing severe long term side-effects or death.
Overview: As mentioned above, breakthroughs in cancer treatment create great excitement – and this was the case with the new drug-based immune therapies.
However, it is extremely important that patients differentiate between drug-based immune therapies, developed by big Pharmaceutical Companies, and the blood or tissue-based immune therapies that we organise for our patients
Background: In the case of the drug based immune therapies, once FDA approval was obtained, they were quickly and widely distributed. There was tremendous enthusiasm and massive promotion – oncologists saw them as alternatives to chemotherapies.
However; like many new medical discoveries, as the dust settled, a more realistic picture was emerging.
Many of our oncology colleagues noticed severe and unpredictable side effects, such as heart damage, in some patients on immune therapies.
Papers about the unpredictable side effects are appearing in the medical literature and warnings have been issued.
Caution: If you are considering using drug based immune therapies we recommend you read the articles below. (click topic).
1.Immune System, Unleashed by Cancer Therapies, Can Attack Organs
2. Managing the Side Effects of Novel Cancer Immunotherapeutics
3. Toxicities of Immunotherapy for the Practitioner
4. Checkpoint Inhibitors & Cardiac Toxicity: An Emerging Issue
5. Dangers with Car T Cell therapies – the popular new immune treatment
Blood or blood tumour-based vaccines:
This is a very safe treatment method in which Natural Killer Cells (NK cells) and Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte (CTL’s) cells are taken out of a patient’s body, cultured and processed to be activated or to acquire additional functions, until their resistance to cancer is strengthened, after which the cells are re-infused back to the patient.
1. NK cells and T lymphocytes isolated from the patient’s blood are activated and expanded and then re-infused into the body. Upon encountering a tumour cell, the activated NK cell attaches to the membrane of the cancer cell and injects toxic granules that quickly dissolve the target cell.
In less than five minutes, the cancer cell is dead, and the NK cell moves on to its next target. A single NK cell can destroy up to 27 cancer cells before it dies. Many millions are infused into a patient during this process. This is the mechanism by which this type of immune treatment is effective in Cancer therapy.
Dendritic Cell vaccines are quite a popular form of Immunotherapy in which the Dendritic cells present the tumour antigens to the body’s Cytotoxic T lymphocytes for destruction of the tumour cells.
Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes from the patient themselves are directly activated, expanded in the lab and when re-infused back to the patient they can effectively act against the tumour cells.
Personalised peptide vaccines can also be made from a selection of peptides that are handpicked based on the patient’s blood and specific molecular and genetic profile.
2. Tumour lysate vaccines: There are two main immunotherapy vaccines, one called whole tumour vaccine which is derived from the patient’s whole tumour; for example a lymph node can be harvested and used to create a personalised vaccine.
This requires the patient’s tumour tissue to be preserved alive and in a sterile manner at the time of surgery. That tissue is then forwarded to a vaccine laboratory for processing. The patient then provides a white cell harvest and the manufacturing process for a personalised vaccine begins.
Side effects – virtually nil. For some, a slight fever or flu-like feeling can occur, but not always. High degree of safety and predictability.
Results Significant increase in disease free survival, complete response or static non-progressive disease could be accomplished in patients – including those with ovarian cancer, Acute Lymphoblastic leukemia, Acute Myeloid Leukemia, advanced in-operable pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer with multiple metastasis and breast cancer with metastasis and many other cancer types.
X-Ray Below:
Male, 85 years old. Pancreatic cancer with multiple liver metastases.
Combination treatment with NK cells T cells, dendritic cells every two weeks
chemotherapy, (GEM 600 mg/2WEEKS), hyperthermia every week. Low Profit Margin: Finally, blood or blood tumour-based immune therapies cannot be mass produced – it’s one on one. No profits.
This contrasts with drug-based immune therapies, produced en masse by big pharmaceutical companies for huge profits.
PubMed Paper:
The research data suggests that cell based immune therapies are a safe adjunct treatment modality of tackling cancer and may induce effective immune responses in cancer patients and help improve the prognosis.
The results suggests that NK cell and CTL based immune therapies combined with hyperthermia & low-dose chemotherapy was effective even in advanced cancers which were refractory to conventional therapeutic modalities… Click for PubMed
Hot tip:
Patients in remission with no evidence of disease are strongly advised to investigate cell based immune therapy to help prevent recurrence and repair and restore their immune system after chemotherapy and other treatments.
Note: Low dose chemotherapy, monoclonal antibodies and radiation techniques such as CyberKnife, stereotactic radiation therapy, proton beam therapy etc can be used in conjunction with personalised vaccine approaches.
Summary of immune therapy differences
Drug based immune therapies:
- occasional excellent outcomes – especially in melanomas
- side effects – highly unpredictable – ranging from mild to severe
- helps only 50% of patients – doctors unclear why
- now being used in trials for other cancers
- although FDA approved – still experimental because new side effects appear as more widely used
- long term effects still unknown
Blood or blood tissue based immune therapies:
- consistent exceptional patient outcomes
- side effects – predictable – ranging from low to non-existent
- not experimental – our collegiate clinic has treated 10,000 patients since 1990
- value add – can safely enhance other treatments, e.g. low dose chemotherapy, hypothermia, cyber knife, Proton Beam therapy and stereo tactic radiation.
- long term effects known – no severe side effects