Cancer Came Back After Clear Scans — Here's What They Missed
Dr. Dino Prato walks through a colon cancer case where standard scans missed a relapse. Marco had surgery and chemo, then developed liver metastases. Prato argues the miss came from skipping precision tests like circulating tumor DNA and RNA sequencing, and describes his approach using deep molecular mapping, targeted drugs, and immune therapies that he says achieved remission.
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Marco, not his real name. At 56, when he was diagnosed with colon cancer, he was scared, but ready to fight. He had surgery. He removed parts of the tumor from the colon resection and started chemotherapy, standard chemotherapy. But he went a step further. He got an integrative doctor and started using high dose vitamin C. With his integrative doctor alongside standard of care, good news rolled in. The tumor markers fell. The scan looked clear. Green lights everywhere. Marco rang the bell. His family cried. Everyone exhaled. But months later, at a routine checkup, his lab started to show slight elevations in liver enzymes. And this triggered imaging. And as you can imagine, the scan found that he had growth in the liver and the cancer had metastasized. What did he do wrong? What did we learn in all of this? And I'll tell you what happened before we go further. What was wrong was right from the beginning. He did not have full circulating tumor cell data. He would have known it metastasized and was beyond the level of the bowel wall way ahead of time. He didn't have methylation scores, he didn't have vesicle scores, which tell us all about metastasis. He had no deep mapping, no next generation sequencing to look at all the DNA mutations. And even if he had done that, that would have only not been enough. He didn't have full RNA transcriptomics, thousands of markers. He was missing immune system targeting with spatial biology. And so when you look at all of that, his testing was improper. And so he began surgery and high dose chemo and even did integrative care. And it wasn't enough. Didn't have an immunotherapy plan at all. There wasn't a treatment in place besides the high dose vitamin C that had anything to do with his immune system. And so the cancer came back, receded, and it went into the liver. But it could have been caught very early and it would have changed the entire treatment plan. From that moment on, we knew the goal was to build an immune centric plan to turn those cold tumors hot and find out what was going on to what caused the cancer. And with deep mapping, thousands of markers and our algorithms, we found what was going on. See, most metastatic colon cancers do not respond to immunotherapy in the way you think, like PD1 inhibitors, they don't have that microsatellite instability. They're actually stable and they're cold tumors. And so they don't respond well to PD1 inhibitor. And even if they did, they only do it temporarily. And even when a colon cancer, when you Find DNA targets like braf and crass mutations. These only slow things down. When they add these drugs, they're only going to cause cytostatic activity, the slowing of the tumor. They're not actually killing things. We need to see the whole picture. Do all the testing so we can build for patients an immune centric plan that is aimed at eliminating the cancer. And we do this with multi omics mapping and with an immunogenic strategy where means what is an immunogenic strategy? Where your immune system is removing the cancer and direct to tumor delivery when needed so that we can get the immune system activated at that area and take the cancer out. I'm Dr. Dino Prado and for two decades we've helped patients who have failed some of the top cancer facilities across the United States get people out of guesswork into precision and much more life. Today I want to tell you this story of Marco's story which we've seen many of these over the years. We've been around for 25 years, many thousands of patients, many colon cancer patients. Simply at an eye level, you can see why the green lights that you get early on aren't what you hope them to be. The are improving, but it's not going where you want. They can still hide these cancer cells and tissues in the body and they can go unseen, Especially when you don't have the correct testing. Full precision testing is critical. So we sat with Marco, we drew a simple picture, we did all the deep mapping. We finally got on what caused the cancer, Built the treatment plans for him and helped the patient go into remission. And the key here is to establish immune centric care so that that remission has a better chance of holding. So the DNA, yes, it looks at the mutation. So I always say the best way to understand this is if we go up in and look at a drone and we could see our cancer in an aerial view of a city. It shows us the car and there's all the streets going. Everywhere is the map, the driver inside the car is the rna. It tells us what are the resistance points, where's the cancer going, what will it respond to? But even more important, which really few people, if any, do at all, is the spatial biology. Understanding the tumor microenvironment. The gangs around the tumor that are blocking the police of the immune system to getting to the tumor. These neighborhoods, especially in the liver, where colon cancer can commonly spread, can be really difficult to treat. So it's really important that when we look at the tumor microenvironment and we go after the tumor, we do it in a very direct manner. So where cancer and immune cells are inside the tumor's neighborhood, especially in the liver, where the colon cancer can commonly spread, it's so important to have good planning so that the right treatment can be delivered and done in a precise manner. So we had good signals for Marco. We were able to map it, we were able to help him. We explained, if you will, why the car, the DNA was off, and what we needed to do and what were the drivers. And we were able to implement the drugs that were needed or treatments on label, off label, which are repurposed drugs that were targeted for him. And very importantly, in this perspective, phytotherapeutics and immunotherapy, that was essential, that we had to custom build in our own pharmacies to help him. See, this is what precision does. The results, we found the targets, we treated the targets, and the patient started to show the benefits and went into remission. And we tracked that with circulating tumor cells, CT free DNA methylation scores, vesicle scores, they tell us leading indicators that the cancer is looking good and going into remission. If not, we have adapt monitoring, which tells us we need to move in this direction because the cancer cells want to mutate. Patient responded beautifully. In this particular case, we looked at T cells and natural killer cells because during the care, we want to release these damped damage associated molecular patterns from these tumors. Almost all solid tumors benefit with these. And we get these micro releases which stimulates the natural killer cells to find that cancer, turn these tumors from cold into hot. And so now we can get proper immunotherapy, which made all the difference. Marco's lesions in the liver cleared, his immune system responded well. And to bring the patient into remission. My first look at this is that the treatments that are typically done with patients are totally incorrect because there's no precision planning. Usually the treatment plan is designed from some very good drugs that are used for colon cancer, but there's no deep mapping. Those were used for the averages, not for you. Meaning they're not looking at thousands of data points or looking at maybe tumor marker biopsy imaging and planning from there. But when you know these drugs are the right targets for you, you can microdose them. In fact, I've seen many patients with late stage colon cancer under our care look like they're on vacation. Because we're using micro microdosing, we don't need high dose. We can go to 10, 15% of the medicine and get right to the tumor. We can build an immune system care which is specific for the patient. These are the keys to targeting. And now we get into repurposed drugs. We can custom build those, grow, dose this, and now you have 1 plus 1 equaling 5 or 1 plus 1 equaling 11 because you have all this data working for you and layering in the right phytotherapeutics intravenously back to tumor, helping the treatments work better, supporting the care so the patient has a long term response and healing that we want. Then we have to deliver the medicine genetically targeted fractionated chemotherapy. There's areas we need to get to the tumor so we can treat difficult to reach areas and get the medicine right to the tumor and seal it so it dies, but builds an immune system response using chemo immunoprecision injections, minimally invasive interventional radiology oncology, which is image guided and it's very powerful. So these combinations are so important. And we see this with our colon cancer patients, really with a lot of cancer patients being very effective. But the key here is the immune system. And if you look at colon cancer, the majority of colon cancer patients do not have good immunotherapy. And that's why they often don't get the result that they want. So it's very important to stimulate these damps damage associated molecular patterns in micro amounts, not too much, but in the right dosing to stimulate the immune system and awaken the body's natural ability to heal, to go after the cancer. This is how it works. This is what we've seen precision oncology do. And in this case with Marco, we were able to use AIT autogloss adoptive immunotherapy, build a custom treatment of his own natural killer cells, dendritic cells trained by his damps, these signals, the damage associated molecular patterns, these signals and return them to the patient' in the right dosing. And that along with adaptive monitoring, helped the patient reach remission and then monitor the patient to help them stay in remission. So that's the goal. And so now the patient feels like we have everything covered, we have all the right data and the treatment plan makes a huge difference. So I just wanted you to see. And over the years, we've helped so many colon cancer patients what precision oncology is able to do with colon cancer and late stage colon cancer. Many colon cancers don't have micro satellite instability. They're actually stable, which means they can't really do the typical PD1 immun immunotherapies. But we custom build those immunotherapies, and we go to the tumor to make it hot instead of cold. So now the treatment responds to immunotherapy. That is, in essence, the key to what we're able to do with our colon cancer patients. I hope this was helpful. And may the lord bless you on your journey to healing, Sam.
