Why Most Cancer Drugs Don’t Kill Cancer — They Just Manage It

Your immune system is powerful by design. It is super powerful. Immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment, but only if it's the right type for you. Today we're going to break down precision immunotherapy. Not a generic drug or treatments for the averages, but a custom built plan that fits your tumor. Specifically, we're going to unpack this treatment called aait and it's an autogloss adoptive immunotherapy that uses natural killer cells and dendritic cells from your own body built to attack your t and why precision targets change the entire game in cancer treatment. Today we're going to go right into that precision immunotherapy not generic drugs like PD1 inhibitors. We've done other episodes on that. You're welcome to watch that. And this is going to help you understand the power of the immune system. We'll uncover the science simply and how these different aspects of the immune system can really change the entire game in cancer no matter where you are in treatment. The planning tools we use for immunotherapy, how the cells are prepared and made because they're customly designed for each patient and how we do that with protection and safet and quality. I'll show you how ait autoglous adaptive immunotherapy in our combination of natural killer cells and dendritic cells primed with what we call dams. We'll get into that in a minute. These special types of antigens for cancer and how this makes a difference in how these cells work. We'll try to keep it at a seventh grade level to the best of my ability. Keep the science tight and exciting. I'm very excited because in the early years I used to work in building cultures with the natural killer cells and dendritic cells. And today I'm going to share with you how far it's advanced. I'm Dr. Din, founder of Envita medical centers. For decades and by the grace of God, we've helped patients who've already tried some of the biggest names in oncology and our approach to N of 1 precision data over dogma, targets over averages. We've been advancing this immunotherapy for 18 years and I'm proud of the work we've done and I'm going to share this with you and how this has helped patients and how it's continuing to improve with the right targets. So let's get started. What tumor types have evidence that immunotherapy is helpful? How can we plan treatment with immune profiling? And spatial biology. This is next level. So you're going to see the neighborhoods of cells and how I'm going to get into this in a minute. There's a gang blocking the police from getting in and killing the tumor. That gang around your cells is blocking your immune system, which are the police, from getting to the tumor. And so we can talk about how to make that tumor hop and why. The cells prepared in a certain way make a difference, and they make a difference for patient care. And then we're going to talk about what are the right steps in the process of planning. So in this first part, what is AIT A. Toggless adoptive immunotherapy in plain Langu? The state of the art of immunotherapy, where you use your own natural killer cells and dendritic cells to attack tumors. We educate them, strengthen them, give them what they need, then return them back to the body in large quantities so they can go after tumors. There are two core parts. One is crucial. It's called the natural killer cells. Natural killer cells is what God has given us. By design. They have two jobs. They kill tumors and viruses. And if they can find your cancer, they'll kill it. So you're wondering, why didn't my natural killer cells work in the first place? They do, but there's effects happening in your immune system, outside your tumors, blocking them from working, evading. It's called the tumor microenvironment. And natural killer cells can be grown, typed, be given the perfect ID badge, the best one possible, and go find the tumor. What's beautiful about them is they think they're not like a drug. They can actually go wherever in the bone, in the brain, central nervous system. It basically can penetrate anywhere. And what's beautiful, it's at a cellular level. So the sooner the better, because obviously it works on tumors, but it works even more beautifully when you're dealing with cells. So because it's a natural killer cell killing cancer cells, the next part is dendritic cells. These are the cells that take the antigens, these little markers off the tumors, and they hand them off to the natural killer cell so the natural killer cell can find the tumor. Think of them as like these little alien cells with protruding hands. They carry the information. The information they carry is everything because it tells the natural killer cell where to find, seek, and destroy and kill those cancer cells. So your immune system has this master teacher. It's the dendritic cell. We like to load these dendritic cells with neoantigens straight from the tumor. Because if you have a cancer, especially if it's advanced, it sheds those antigens like a snake sheds its skin. And we need to get those new antigens onto the dendritic cell with other messengers so the natural killer cells, the soldiers can go to work and do what they do best, which is kill the cancer cells by releasing an enzyme and literally kill the cancer cells. The other part of the signaling is damps. This is one of the most important pieces we've learned in our years of building natural killer cells and dendritic cell vaccines. Damps are damage associated molecular pattern dendritic cells so that they can teach better. They give the right information, but the dose and the context matters. That means when we do high dose chemotherapy, we can get bad dams, accelerated dams, which causes inflammation and causes cells suppression of the immune system and actually metastasis. But if the DAMPS are correct and microdosed, which is why we like to use low dose chemotherapy, we then can have the proper information to pass to the dendritic cells in the building of the natural killer cell vaccine. So there's a brilliance by design here that each step builds on itself. Just follow me. It's to the dendritic cell to get the natural killer cell to do what it does. But you can't have too much of it because like anything, too much of a good thing can be bad. It has to be at the right micro dose. So imagine if your natural killer cells debault quickly the tumor and the dendritic cells train it. Precisely what happens over time. It's a virtuous cycle. More kill, more antigen, better teaching stronger immunity. And this is the road to long term emission. So if you can see that that's the path, this reinforces that loop. That's a secret key to solving most cancers. And that's why IMM is such a big deal. So I just went over this key to solving cancer just in that process step I gave you. So how does AAIT work? A togless adoptive immunotherapy. First we want to take a temperature of the tumor. We want to stand. What type of tumor is this? What's the microenvironment? What's the neighborhood of the cells around the tumor? We want to see what those gangs are doing to block the immune system. Because otherwise you would have already had your natural killer cells killing the tumor. But it's not doing that. What are those? What we call spatial neighborhoods of cells that are suppressing your natural killer CE cells from doing their job, holding them back. Think of this as taking the temperature. If the tumor is hot, that means we can go in and kill it. If the tumor is cold, it's got all these gangs blocking it. It's called tumor microenvironment. And it's not as easy as just taking a PD1 inhibitor by any means. Because until you can see that visually and image that and understand that, you can't really tell what the patient needs. So it's so important to see what is necessary. This hot versus cold, it's critical. Now a hot tumor will have these til, which are natural killer cells that are enriched tumors. Getting to the tumor. The problem is those natural killer cells are already exhausted. They're often immune evaded. And PD1 therapy and other immunotherapies work better when we have hot tumors. But the most important thing is we want a high neoantigen load. What's neo? New antigens. So remember I said around each tumor you have the skin of the tumor, the information and it sheds it As a way to avoid the immune system. It's one method it uses to evade. So by shedding the tumor, the dendritic cells can't pass the right information on to the natural killer cells. So we have to get the training. Typically you'll see in other facilities, doctors talk about natural killer cells that are tills and they're inside the tumors. These are better? No, these are immune exhausted cells. These are cells that are not better, they're exhausted. So what we want is new cells that are natural killers with the right information. So they have all the cytotoxicity to go after tumors. We also want to get rid of the cold. What's that cold? The gangs that are blocking the immune system from doing its work. So an immune desert of immune cells that have exhaustion or particularly evasion. They're so cold because so you have high regulatory mdsc, myelo derived suppressor cells and others that are blocking the cells from working. And that's what we have to change as soon as we shift that. We got an entirely different game in this cancer, really at almost every stage. This is why this is many ways the holy grail in cancer research and biologics. Because when we can switch this, we just see better quality of life, length of life, and the patient responds better to all other therapies in the published literature when the immune system is operating correctly. But there's more to it. Before ait, we often need to adjust the tumor microen. So before we grow these cells, we have to look at the tumor and around the Tumor. This is where we have to get directly to the tumor, around it and shift information. Often with chemo immunoprecision injection, we can use immunotherapies in and around the tumor to change that environment and even create a miniature vaccine where now the rest of these neoantigens are pouring out. It's like squeezing an orange. These neoantigens are going out, they're being primed. The dendritic cells now can pick these up and we can create and reveal the fresh tumor specific fragments that the dendritic cel cells can present and teach the T cells to recognize the cancer's newest disguises. So now that we have this information, this becomes a great time to take the cells out, grow them, expand them into the billions, teach them to attack tumor and bring them in because we have all that right information. So immune profiling, count, function exhaustion markers, checkpoints, cytokine balances, natural killer cell fitness, the counts, all of this goes into the algorithms with the cytokine balance and checkpoints to understand that patients are getting the right care. In this, an important technology biology comes into play. Where the cells are around the tumor, the blocking cells, these myeloid suppressor cells, poor trafficking, the gangs that are stopping those natural killer cells from doing the work, the stromal barriers, the hardness around the tumors, the fibrous materials, these are all taken into account so that we know the T cells have the best chance of getting to the tumor by taking those neighborhoods and cleaning out those gangs, those blockers, so the police of your immune system can get in to kill the cancer. So the key here now is the design. So we've gotten this far, we kind of understand doing. What's the design of personalized cancer therapy? Well, with the dendritic cell part of this, we have to choose the right neoantigens, the new antigens, the new shedded material from the cancer fragments, this mature dendritic cell now can properly train. And the best way to train it is using these damps. These are special information rich, data rich treatments. You know, you've even seen today where pharmaceutical companies just got approved cytokine 15 to try to stimulate damps. And the reason pharmaceutical companies do that is because if one drug, a thousand vials, just sell the vial, but you're only getting a tiny shot. I'm talking about an entire process where it's built, prone, you know, toxicities tested and then given. And the reason it's hard to mass produce this, this is precision care. It's done on one person, one At a time. There's a science and art to the cell growth and culture. It's not just giving a shot. And you can't expect from the shot what you can from a full orchestrated immune system. The goal here is a resilient T cell, a memory against a tumor that it sheds and shifts as antigens almost like a snake. So that it and we keep teaching the immune system so the immune system can recognize these new disguises and kill the cancer. Now that we have all this going, now we need to expand and activate these autoglass natural killer cells. Autoglus means coming from your own body. If you've ever heard of car T cells, those are natural killer cells that are engineered with cars and then given. And you can have severe immune reactions and some cancers, yes, they're approved and helpful, but they have these severe reactions where in the autologous adoptive immunotherapy. In our clinical experience, we just don't see it the most elegant way to get care. So we now know that when people do high dose chemotherapy or radiation or even long doses of checkpoint inhibitors like PD1s, this can exhaust your natural killer cells, as does the tumor itself. You can exhaust these natural killer cells. So we now need to grow these cells, re energize them, and we can measure that with cytotoxicity to know that they're vibrant, they're killing, they're strong and they're efficient. Type to your specific damps and can overcome your tumor microenvironment. Those blockades, those gangs outside the tumors so they can get to it. And now we have shifted the game. The cold tumors become hot. The natural killer cells are able to do their work. Now, if we have a in spatial biology, if we see already certain cancers like lung and renal cell and melanoma that are already typically hot cancers or immunotherapy type cancers. The immunotherapy vaccines in our clinical experience work beautifully fast because they just get in and kill right away. So we can grow these cells, type them, and we've seen just I can share a story with you of lung cancer patients that had severe metastases. And then the natural killer cells just cleans out a lot of it over and over again. We see clinically because they're hot tum cancers where tumors are colder. Before we see a response like that, we have to clean out those spatial neighborhoods so the natural killer cells can do their work. So there's an extra step in getting direct to tumor and getting those damps to get released to those natural Killer cells. So now in this next step, we have to combine, monitor and adapt the dendritic cells and the natural killer cells for the immediate work that we're hoping for them to accomplish. So there's ongoing monitoring with labs and imaging after we've given those to the patient. So we've grown them, typed them, they're ready to go. And now we infuse them back into the patient. Different doses depending on what trying to do. And of course the patient has to be a good selection for care. Now we can adjust dosing and timing in the combinations so that we can get exactly what the patient needs to make sure that it's helping kill and create that beautiful cycle of kill. Present the antigens and damps dendritic cells back to the natural killer cells and you now create this virtuous cycle of kill. Formation of tumor. That's the goal of getting to long term remission. The core idea of autologous adaptive immunotherapy. AIT is broadly applicable when typed correctly to many cancers. Natural killer CEL are tumor agnostic. They'll go after almost all cancers. They use stress signaling hunters and DCs. Dendritic cell vaccines are an antigen platform. So we like to load them with these neoantigens and then pass that data onto the natural killer cells. This is how we can extend across multiple cancer types. There have been numerous studies underway for years because harnessing the immune system is the central way to solving cancer. In my clinical experience, evidence keeps growing across more and more tumor types. The combinations that when we do this work it has benefit. So seen studies where pancreatic cancers with dendritic cells in published literature. Natural killer cells prostate cancer. One of the most common ones was dendritic cells proving and now it's been advanced with natural killer cells, sarcomas, natural killer cell combinations of very difficult cancers to treat. Liver cancers where we can augment these neoantigens to the dendritic cell, localize them and help the natural killer cells understand them. Lung cancer like I just went into, once they get those neoantigens, those natural killer cells can get to those tumors very quickly. Glioblastom exciting where multiple trials with dendritic cells have been on way and natural killer cells is technology getting better and very exciting because these cancers can get surgically removed and come back. And if the immune system can get to those, it can stay away. That's the goal, the clinical goal. Colorectal cancer where we have these targets of dendritic and natural killer cells in the Right dosing helping to bring these cancers into remission. Ovarian cancers, very powerful renal cell, Another tumor, melanoma. Right. Which is all these immune known immune cancers that respond well. Gastric cancers, head and neck cancers, almost any of breasts. This is very powerful for breasts and breast cancer. Oftentimes they have no immunotherapy. This is a customized immunotherapy for patients that is built just on them without getting all the reactions, but targeting it to the patient. You know, when they have these aggressive breast cancers, We've just seen immunotherapy to the breast be very powerful. So if a tumor has the antigens and natural killer cells can see the stress signaling, the autologous adoptive immunotherapy can be engineered to go after almost any cancer type. So this is important. So let's go through this part of planning here for a minute. So why is this critical? Well, the deeper we understand the biology of the tumor and the more precisely we can get to it, then we can adapt these different layers of treatment so that they're working to stop that gang trafficking, get the police of the immune system in, and now really start killing the tumor and create that cycle we want of kill, pass the antigens along, build the immune system, kill and continue to do that. So some of the technologies helping us get there is tools like spatial biology. Because we can actually see around the tumor microenvironment. We can tell you if PD1 is even a target. Sometimes, sometimes people will come back. And like I've said before in published papers like Frontiers, it only works on 19% of the patients long term. And the problem is the reason why it may or may not work for a patient has a lot to do with how much PD1 is being expressed. So that's something you never hear because no one's looking at the tumor microenvironment with that kind of biopsy data at the level of where they can measure the spatial biology and look at the blockades and remove them. That's the power of understanding how the therapy is going to work and then providing the workaround if needed, which most patients do need workarounds so that these therapies are more effective. So this is importance of tackling and reprogramming around the immune system so we don't have any more immunovation. Because as I told you, if the immune system can find these cancer cells, it knows where to go. I remember early on we had our natural killer cell dendritic cell vaccine in the very beginning, almost 17 years ago we gave an infusion, patient was doing well, gave another infusion. All of a sudden the patient was experiencing pain in their spine. The pain was like strong, but we were able to treat it as fine. And the idea was, oh goodness, this pain, what's causing it? It was because there was a micromatostatic spread of the prostate cancer to T11 of the spine. And we couldn't even see it on imaging. Later we found that those natural killer cells went in, burrowed, killed the cancer cells, and then the tissue around it was able to heal something we couldn't even see with testing and imaging. That's the power of the immune system. It will burrow through bone, tissue, central nervous system, create heat. We had a case recently that I shared before. This patient is one of the many who has been helped by our work. And he had a tumor basically in the area of the head, neck. And as soon as the natural killer cells came in, just felt the heat, started shrink, began to eat within four hours and got better every day because the immune system was just so well typed, it was specific. So those are great cases. Now, I have to be clear that immunotherapy like this doesn't work perfectly on every patient, but as we've been perfecting it, it's working more and more. I always have to say that I think that's important, but the quality matters. The problem with these cellular therapies, which are so exciting, is that if you go almost anywhere in Latin America and Mexico because it technically is not available in the United States. And I think that's unfortunate because I think one of the reasons big pharma is not in these treatments is because you can't mass produce has to be done on one person at a time with cell work and culture. It's very specific. There's a cancer industrial complex at play here. But the most important thing I want you to know about quality with the AAIT is the only cell products we've used in our international facility for the last 17, 18 years now is human product that is not used in other facilities. We know that from the distributors that come from Europe, Germany and France. That produces cytokines in the media cultures we use. They do not do this. Most of these organizations are ordering non human product from cytokines from China, which are not meant for humans. They want this immune enriched care. But quality matters, and quality makes a big difference with the way your cells respond to care. And almost think of it, anything is in your body that your body recognizes is far better than when it Doesn't. We don't want to trigger type 2 immune responses, antibody mediated cytotoxicity. A lot of this which you also see in car T cell, these immune reactions, we want to prevent them. That's the beauty of this therapy because we're using your own cells and they work beautifully when they're typed and staged. But we always use the highest quality products because when we began our work here in the United States, it was all designed around being into a clinical trial. And once we found the costs were too high for the U.S. they want us to become a pharmaceutical company. Almost two decades ago, I moved it into our international facility, which has allowed us now 18 years of just expanding, perfecting, improving. We just have an amazing team and it's allowed us to keep a cost down. But the technology, the top in the world. So quality testing is important. No cells are given to our patients that don't pass cytotoxicity, aren't safe, clean and high, highly effective at killing cancer cells. So this is the difference. And you don't see the safety gap in international cellular cancer vaccines. It just, it's. You don't have this type of quality control. This is what I've seen. I hope, I hope they do that more often, but they don't. Because oftentimes people like to use the less expensive route, but that's not the best for the patient. I believe the human grade is the only way to go when you're doing cellular vaccine work. So once a cellular immunotherapy is right for you, you're the right candidate. And when the profiling shows the right actionable antigens and we have these right neoantigens and the tumor microenvironment is built, now we can give the patient their ait autologous adoptive immunotherapy in a personalized manner. And it's not a plug and play. It's custom designed for each person because everybody's going to have different neoantigens. Even two cancers, two, same type and stage are going to be totally different antigens. Even the same patient's tumor that's advanced can have different antigens because they're shifting and changing. So this is why this process, I believe is so important. And this is why, you know, standard oncology, you rarely see this because of several things, probably regulatory pathways in the United States with cellular vaccines and combinations, but it's in the favor of big pharma because you can't produce these in large quantities like you can a jab, you know, like the cytokine 15 jab which you can give, it'll help your NK. It doesn't have the same effect because one cytokine isn't going to do what the concert of your nkdcs neoantigens damps these advanced processing, including the tumor microenvironment around the cancer cells. It's helpful, but it doesn't do all of this. And I believe that when these cells are prepared, they have to be prepared in the right way. It's not trivial and it's costly to do these cellular preparations, but big pharma better off in creating vials where they can sell thousands and thousands of these a day around the world and not try to make cellular vaccines which are very intricate. And there's an art and science to making these cells, growing them in the cultures, viewing them under a microscope, as I remember I did for years. And just to let you know, even in the years when we were working in our labs, we'd always put on music and I'd always turn on praise and worship music. And I always noticed, at least it's not scientific, but I noticed in my experience, the cells did better. They were alive and vibrant and active. They rapidly would be active. And we like that, that activity, that movement, because it's showing us the cells are active and cytotoxic. And then flow cytometry and other tests we use to make sure those cells are ready to go and to do the effect that they best possibly can within a patient. So patients who want precision care and a precision immunotherapy, I don't think it gets any higher than building an autogloss adoptive immunotherapy, especially if you have an immune centric cancer like melanoma, lung, renal cell, these types of cancers and there are others, it responds so beautifully. But the way to know this is through testing. And when you do testing and you can see the spatial neighborhood biology, you can even shift that to make the AIT work to the best possible. The earlier we type and immobilize the immune system, the better, because the earlier the better. That means you're only dealing with cells instead of tumors. And these natural killer cells can take out cells and stay in the body and do their work. So not your own body, by the grace of God, has been designed to heal cancer, in my opinion, or knock it out and improve quality of life. And these are the natural killer cells. It's been well published. Natural killer cells are powerful. It's been well published. That immunotherapy is huge. In the future. Big lesson here is targeted typed immunotherapy with precision is the key. Both testing deep profiling, removing those immune blockades, designing the right combinations and the right sequence for patients. So I hope this was helpful. Gives you an idea of autoglass adoptive immunotherapy, the science and art behind it. And maybe help you to ask better questions when you see your doctors and you're thinking about immunotherapy because it's very powerful. This particular therapy is available only in our international facility in Aramisillo. And it's not in the United States. It's important that I say that because I'm talking about this very exciting. But in the United States it isn't here yet. We hope someday it will be. And it has to do with cost and quality of products so patients can access the care. And also because it allows us to develop faster and use newer technology that allows us to move in the best interest of our patients who are already very sick and have failed other cancer facilities. And not all cancer patients are candidates. The ones that are. It makes sense where the targets are there, where they're not. There are other types of immunotherapies we use within our facilities to help patients. I hope this was helpful and you learning about AIT Toggless adoptive immunotherapy. May the Lord bless you on your journey to healing.