Tag Archives: cancer care

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

How Autohemotherapy Bolsters Immune Response

Tube containing a blood sample
Autohemotherapy may boost immune response.

Autohemotherapy is a self-blood therapy that can be used in cancer treatment to help boost the body’s immune system response. Autohemotherapy is one of a number of beneficial cancer therapies that Issels cancer treatment teams may integrate into a patient’s comprehensive immunobiologic core treatment program.

Described in Mainstream Medicine Since 1913

First described by French physician Paul Ravaut in 1913, autohemotherapy is not an “alternative therapy,” but a mainstream medical “serum therapy” that has been used to treat a wide range of chronic disease conditions. Hundreds of articles on its use can be found in mainstream medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Used in Europe and South America

More commonly used in Europe and South America than in the United States, autohemotherapy involves the withdrawal of a small amount of the patient’s blood and its reinjection; usually back into the vein or into a muscle. When disease, including cancer, attacks the body, the body fights back; producing antigens and other metabolic by-products that are present in the patient’s blood.

Triggering Immune Response

By removing and then reintroducing cancer by-products back into the patient’s body, the goal of autohemotherapy is to stimulate a fresh immune system response. To enhance the immunobiologic effect of autohemotherapy, sometimes the removed blood is mixed with a homeopathic remedy or ozone before it is injected into the patient.

Many Issels patients have benefited from the inclusion of autohemotherapy in their integrative immunotherapy program (see Issels treatment reviews). However, as is true in all cancer therapies, treatment response varies with each patient. Talk to your Issels cancer treatment team about the value of including autohemotherapy in your cancer treatment program.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Unexpected Cancer Tumor Complexity Requires New Treatment Protocols

DNA
Cancer tumors are considerably more genetically complex than thought.

Unlocking the body’s genetic code has led to myriad discoveries that are transforming medicine. One unexpected discovery is that cancer tumors are considerably more genetically complex that previously believed, causing researchers to rethink current traditional methods of treating cancer.

“Until recently, it was assumed cancer cells were more or less identical clones of each other. We have found this is not true. Cells, taken from a single tumor from one person, can have many different genetic alterations within them,” Chris Jones of the Institute of Cancer Research in London told The Guardian.

Mapping of the human genome opened the door to targeted cell therapy. Of the body’s 23,000 genes, scientists found 150 genes with mutations that could trigger cells to create cancerous tumors. Scientists found that the various triggering mechanisms could be targeted and tumor growth slowed or halted using new cancer drugs that redefined chemotherapy. Now instead of a blanket approach that killed healthy cells along with the cancerous ones, specific drugs could be used to target cancer cells without harming healthy cells.

Initially, patient response to these new targeted drug treatments was impressive. However, in many cases cancer returned 6 months after treatment; but this time tumors were drug-resistant. What scientists discovered surprised them. When drugs blocked one path to tumor development, cancer cells demonstrated their genetic complexity by finding a new path.

The problem may be that traditional chemotherapy, even when targeted, is a destructive force designed to tear down the body. Issels personalized integrated immunotherapy, on the other hand, uses targeted cell therapies designed to build up the body’s immune system, strengthening its ability to fight cancer.

To be continued

Alternative Cancer Treatment

Innovative Cell Imaging Could Improve Personalized Cancer Care

Doctor looking through a microscope.
New Cancer Breakthoughs

One of the most challenging aspects of treating cancer is that, while there are commonalities, each person’s response to cancer and cancer treatments is unique. When cancer cells attack, some people are able to fight off cancer’s devastating effects and recover; others are not. Likewise, a cancer treatment that is effective in achieving long-term remission in one person may not be successful with another.

Biodynamic Imaging, an innovative cell imaging technique created by Purdue University researchers, may allow physicians to accurately determine the efficacy of cancer treatments on an individual. As Purdue research leader David Nolte told R&D Magazine:

“Technicians can use BioDynamic Imaging to measure tumor response to cancer therapy, such as metabolism and cell division. This can tell how well the drug is working and if there are side effects. Our approach is called phenotypic testing, which is more pertinent than genetic testing because it captures the holistic response of cancer to chemotherapy.”

The ability to determine individual response to chemotherapy, cancer vaccines and other cancer therapies could allow treatment teams to evaluate and identify more quickly treatment protocols that most benefit individual patients.

Early to recognize the uniqueness of each person’s response to cancer and cancer treatment, Issels Integrative Oncology began developing our innovative program of individualized immunotherapy more than 60 years ago. In six decades of successful practice, Issels cancer treatment teams have refined personalized cancer care and treatment using a holistic approach to boost immune response and fight cancer on multiple fronts. The success of our immunotherapy-based approach is evident in the many patient testimonials and documented case studies posted on our website.

Cancer Research, News

Cancer Experts Recommend Updating Cancer Definitions

Getting News of Cancer
Getting News of Cancer

There is no more emotionally charged and frightening word than cancer. When spoken in a doctor’s office, patients immediately assume the worst and start counting their days. Most patients consider a cancer diagnosis a death sentence. When cancer screenings detect an abnormality they panic, subjecting their bodies to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in a desperate bid to live. And even if they survive cancer, most live in constant fear that it will return.

A National Cancer Institute advisory panel sent shock waves coursing through the cancer community this week when scientists recommended that:

  1. The definition of cancer be redefined and updated to reflect modern scientific and medical findings. One of the problems with cancer diagnosis, Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer, told CNN Health is that oncologists are still using cancer definitions developed in the 1850s. Back then, cancer typically spread through the body before it was diagnosed. Today, cancer screening methods allow oncologists to examine minute samples measured in millimeters. In evaluating such small tissue samples, natural abnormalities can be misdiagnosed as cancer.
  2. The diagnoses of certain illnesses be changed to eliminate cancer references or cancer language. In other words, some diseases currently defined as cancer would no longer be considered cancerous. As explained in a CBS News report, there are certain potentially pre-cancerous conditions that carry only a slight risk of becoming cancerous. Yet because they are defined as “cancer,” “carcinoma” or “neoplasia” patients panic and often undergo unnecessary surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, frequently suffering damaging side effects.

Next time: Do cancer screenings result in overtreatment

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, News

Cancer Treatment Revolution Could End Chemotherapy

New Cancer Treatment to Null and Void Chemotherapy
New Cancer Treatment to Null and Void Chemotherapy

A cancer treatment revolution could spell the end of chemotherapy and the horrific side effects it visits on cancer patients. As reported by Time magazine, two studies recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a radically different type of anti-cancer treatment was able to achieve an astounding 83% survival rate for leukemia patients after only 2 years of treatment.

The success of the new cancer therapies could ring chemo’s death knell, an event that will not be mourned by cancer patients. Chemotherapy’s virulent side effects wreak a heavy toll on most cancer patients. Many consider the cure to be nearly as bad as the disease.

The new cancer treatments follow in the footsteps of imatinib, or Gleevec, the first mainstream cancer drug to deviate from chemotherapy’s drastic annihilation approach to cancer treatment. Following a kinder, gentler cancer treatment path, in 2001, imatinib reported similar survival rates for patients suffering from myeloid leukemia (CML) and gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST).

“I think we are definitely moving farther and farther away from chemotherapy, and more toward molecularly targeted therapy,” Dr. Martin Tallman, chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s leukemia service, told Time.

Unlike chemotherapy which kills both good and bad cells, evolving targeted cancer therapies take aim only at the specific pathways tumor cells need to thrive. Surrounding healthy tissues are not affected which means fewer side effects and complications for cancer patients. Standard cancer therapies are gradually moving toward the type of individually-tailored, targeted cancer therapies that Issels Integrative Oncology Centers have been offering cancer patients for decades.

Cancer Care Tips, News

U.S. Watching British Fight to Expand Healthcare Coverage to Experimental Cancer Treatments

Cancer patients and healthcare providers are watching the progress of a proposed British bill that would allow the country’s nationalized healthcare system to pay for experimental cancer treatments even if there is no proof they work. Like Britain,

Concerned citizens are watching.
Concerned citizens are watching.

America’s established medical and insurance communities favor long-standing traditional cancer treatments and have been slow to recognize the value of what they term alternative and complementary medicine, much less embrace the healing potential of experimental cancer treatments. Under current British law, experimental cancer treatments are illegal in the United Kingdom, a situation the bill’s author, Lord Maurice Saatchi, hopes to change. Should Parliament approve the bill, it could open the door for the expansion of approved cancer treatments in the U.S.Lord Saatchi, who lost his wife, novelist Josephine Hart, to ovarian cancer two years ago admits that his bill is motivated by grief. He has characterized as “medieval” his wife’s cancer treatment, calling the chemotherapy and radiation she received as “degrading and ineffective.” Under British law, physicians must adhere to standard medical practice or face possible prosecution. Saatchi considers the law’s restrictions a serious impediment to new cancer treatments that may offer cancer patients hope.

In Parliamentary debate, government health minister Lord Frederick Howe pointed out one of the serious problems in bringing cancer treatments to the consumer marketplace, the role entrenched medical and government bureaucracies play in delaying the approval of cancer therapies and drugs, an issue relevant to U.S. cancer treatments.

“It still takes an estimated average of 17 years for only 14% of new scientific discoveries to enter day-to-day clinical practice,” Howe said, adding the obvious, “This is not acceptable.”