In this monologue Dr. Dino Prato, NMD and founder of Invita, argues that precision, n‑of‑1 oncology is not a luxury reserved for the wealthy. He first outlines the prohibitive cost structure of conventional cancer care—big‑pharma drug prices, pharmacy‑benefit‑manager (PBM) mark‑ups, and hospital surcharges—that can add hundreds of thousands of dollars for only a modest 3‑5‑month survival gain. He critiques the FDA’s accelerated‑approval pathway and NCCN guideline reliance on population‑average regimens, noting that response‑rate endpoints often do not translate into overall‑survival or quality‑of‑life benefits, citing recent reviews (Nature 2024, ASCO, FTC 2024, JAMA 2022, European Journal of Cancer). Prato then presents a series of stage‑4 patient case studies (lung, breast, esophageal, metastatic breast) treated with Invita’s multi‑omics, n‑of‑1 approach. For each, he reports dramatic cost reductions (48‑84% savings, e.g., $150k vs >$1M) and striking clinical outcomes—tumor clearance within 8‑12 weeks and improved quality of life. He explains that Invita’s platform analyzes thousands of molecular data points (DNA, RNA, transcriptomics, immune profiling, spatial biology) to build a custom therapeutic stack, contrasting this with the two‑dozen data points typical of standard oncology. He acknowledges that insurers are often reluctant, but highlights employer‑driven health‑share models as potential payers. Throughout, he frames the narrative as a moral imperative—patients deserve affordable, effective precision care, and the current “one‑size‑fits‑all” system is a crime against patients. The talk ends with a call to action for patients, caregivers, and employers to seek out personalized medicine pathways.
Chapters
Can everyone afford in Vida? That's what we're talking about here. People want to come to in Vida, but they say, well, not everybody can afford it. And I'm going to talk about how our patients have afforded it. Then we're going to talk about precision. I'm going to give some examples of cost savings that you can actually see. And if it's the care you need, by the grace of God, doors can open. I've seen it over the years. In this episode, we're going to cut through the cancer money maze, showing how the standard one size fits all path isn't necessarily working for late stage cancer. And the fast tracking of these drugs through the fda, their approvals, pharmacy benefit managers, hospital markups, and at the end, what increasing life maybe by three to five months and pushing costs higher. And then we're going to talk about invita's precision personalized medicine, how people can afford it, and the n of one care, which is custom built on each patient using thousands of data points compared to the average, maybe two dozen data points in conventional oncology. From a biopsy to a tumor marker to imaging and the practical ways patients can access this career. So we're here to get into dispelling only the rich can afford in Vida, which we see on so many platforms. And I've been doing this for 25 years. I'm Dr. Dino Prado. I'm the founder of Invita, and I'm here to share with you the stories of patients and work that we've done to help people that have failed. Some of the top hospitals across the United States, even natural medicine, that hasn't worked. And then they reach out to us and then the ecosystem we've built in personalized medicine and precision, that by the grace of God, has helped people. Imagine paying markups all the way down the cancer care path, you know, from pharmacy to the drug that first is developed by the pharmaceutical big pharma, then it moves to the pharmacy benefit manager, then to the hospital and it just increases life for three to five months. This is just not acceptable. And this is not the way we need to go. In this episode, we're going to unpack this, how that works. Then we're going to talk about precision. I'm going to give some examples that you can actually see in outcomes. Which is the most important piece, the personalized precision outcomes and how we believe those are so important clinically and have been for our patients. Let me take you through some examples of this so you can see it. Here's a stage Four lung cancer. Now this patient came out of a top hospital in Texas, which you, you would know. They're 70 years old with a stage four lung cancer and they were sent home with nothing else to do. In the conventional care, they were spending about a million. It would have been over a million because this is only 200% Medicare. And you got to think they're going higher, like 300% or more Medicare. The cost of cared in Vida was 150,000. That is a 84% cost savings. But that's not the important part. Look at the outcome. Here's the key. The patient here riddled with all these tumors, you can see here before eight weeks after treatment, look at how it cleared up. The outcome is so important and we're doing it at a fraction of the cost. You know, you're not going to get that just in a standard integrative care or natural medicine or you know, in just the. What I see in the conventional, because this patient's already failed care. This is what precision does. This is why people come to in Vida. Here's stage four breast cancer. It's a 73% cost reduction. But I want to go here. Their total cost of care in conventional oncology, I'm going to call it probably closer to 550,000. Even though this is 200% Medicare, I keep saying it's higher than that. Their total cost at Nvidia is about 150,000. But look at the outcome again. It's not like this patient could have gone anywhere to get this precision targeting. And here you have the tumors totally cleared up in 12 weeks. That's the power of precision. I'm so proud of that work. And when we've pushed this over to insurance companies, they're not interested. But you know, who are the employers? They want this option for their employees and health share. Some do as well. So they can reduce costs and improve outcomes for their community. Here's a Stage four esophageal cancer can become very difficult to treat. We see a 48% cost reduction again, 220,000. We charged about 112,000 for precision targeting. And this is not for one or two days of care. This is for 11 weeks of day in and day out care where we improve their quality of life. They don't lose their hair, they have energy. And the main thing is, look at this. The tumors cleared up. The patient responded beautifully to care. That's the power. Here's a breast cancer. Here's a young 38 year old mother with a 57% cost reduction. And the main thing is her metastatic breast cancer that spread to her lungs and bones was cleared. You can see these in our testimonials. We have a lot of these. But look at the cost. The cost of care here is about a half a million. When you look at really 300% Medicare here, it says 450. And she came in at 195,000 in cost and how she did it. Look at this, look at the outcomes. Look at the imaging. Look at to the left, all the tumor metastases. This is all spread throughout her body. Look, lungs all through the regions here, bone. And the patient, after 12 weeks of care is clear. So that's the cure. You can see here that after 12 weeks of care, the patient is clear compared to the original image of all that tumor. The picture is worth a thousand words. People deserve this care. And this is why we're working hard to help people get covered. We believe that the future of cancer treatment is in precision care and patients deserve it. And we're here to help people. Really. Every cancer patient really has two paths. There's two main roads, right? The standard oncology road, the one size fits all, probably something you've already done or are doing or a loved one is doing. These drugs are basically tested in a big pharma manner, which is a double blind placebo clinical trial. Everybody's treated the same, given the same drug. It works on some and not on the others. Sometimes these drugs have to work at 30% and they don't even have to be better than previous drugs. And they can get fast tracked and maybe not really accomplish what we want them to by giving the quality and length of life that the drug should give. That's the model that's guiding the NCCNN guidelines. That's deciding basically your entire cancer journey path, right? And then the difference between precision oncology, where everything's built on you, n of 1 designed for you. We study the tumor's DNA, RNA transcriptomics, immune system, system immune profiling, spatial biology. This is called multiomics, just on you. And then the plan is built on you, your cancer, not everybody. And when we do that, we see clinically a huge difference because we find all these targets that weren't found before and they make a difference clinically in our patients. So according to the National Cancer Institute, biomarkers or this precision testing, genome sequencing of genes, proteins, markers that are matched to people in the right way is at the heart of precision oncology. And we at Invita have taken this to an entire level Customizing it for each person and the difference it is from standard, because I don't think a lot of people go down that road. So the standard path of how a drug gets approved and priced is what we're going to walk down here. So how a drug gets approved, it goes through this double blind placebo clinical trial, spends a lot of time, money and energy and the drug gets approved, where the groups of patients get either the study drug or they get the placebo. This is the gold standard. And these drugs can get accelerated by the fda. It's called fast track. And when these drugs get approved, sometimes early, it's because they had a response rate. Maybe they shrunk the tumor by 30, 40%. But here's the kicker, it may have not increased the quality of life. Then when they do the confirmatory trials, it proved that it really didn't help the patient long term. So according to asco, which is the main conferences that most oncologists go to, one of the largest group on several of their posts, accelerated approvals have not yet shown an overall survival benefit at the time of approval. So according to a 2024 review by Nature. Right, Nature review of drug discovery, the endpoint, which is the response rate of a tumor shrinkage, doesn't necessarily mean the patient is living longer with a better quality of life. FDA approval is the key here. And once that happens, the NCCNN guidelines, National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which is made up of panels of oncologists and research paper, Big Pharma has some influence on here. They approve regimens and protocols for cancer types. And that's how cancer treatment is designed. It's not designed on you, it's not precision. And so the pricing works like this. Big Pharma makes a drug, marks it up into the thousands. It could be 20,000, 50,000 for just a specialty drug. But then there's something called a pharmacy benefit manager, a pbm. So these are linked to the insurance companies and they mark it up even further. And so according to the Federal Trade Commission on January 2024, these PBMs have marked up numerous drugs, these specialty and generic drugs, including oncology drugs, by hundreds of thousands of percent. And maybe dispensing the drug that may not be the best one for the patient because it's working through their own pharmacies to generate billions for them. This is the problem. So now the big Pharma made it, the pharmacy benefit managers marked it up, now the hospital's going to mark it up. And According to a 2022 study, JAMA Internal Medicine Cancer drugs get another markup on average between 1 to 630% from their estimated cost of acquisition. And so this is why you got markup, markup, markup and then the hospitals markup above. So the average hospital markup on average is going to be 250 to 300% Medicare and can go as high as 600% Medicare for surgery, radiation. So this is huge. And this is According to 2017 analysis of gem oncology, dozens of cancer drugs that on the average aren't gonna only increase lifespan by 3.4 months. So what are we talking about? All these costs, all these markups for people to live a few months longer, It's a crime, it's wrong in my opinion. It's not the way it should go. Even the European journal of Cancer they were focusing on cancer treatment with an overall improvement of survival of 4.7 months. It's not enough. This is after all these billions have been spent, research has spent. And the reason is in my clinical experience and what we've seen in our 25 years is because everybody's using the one size fits all model. It doesn't work as well as we'd like it to, where precision breaks down thousands of markers, it builds a custom stack for the patient and that makes a difference. So now this is why people are looking at precision oncology. This is why we see people wanting to come to envyda and the work that we do. Precision oncology flips this entire script because we're building the treatment plan on you. You're n of 1. Everything's custom for you, the you, the cancer patient, your cancer type, what's going on with you. And the goal is to build the best plan, not an average plan, one for you, not on the average patient, but on your markers, DNA, RNA transcriptomics, immune profiling. And this is where we see the huge advantage with our patients. According to the agency of healthcare research, this peer reviewed n of one approach is designed and tailored based on decisions of you, the individual and envied has taken it to an entirely new level. All customized to help our patients live. So I hope this was helpful in why people are seeking precision oncology. Don't feel defeated by the grace of God. You have the opportunity to use personalized medicine and precision, then it's important that you access it and see if you have the right targets and the right care that can help you. Sam.
