Cancer Patient Lab Meeting #79- “Growing Your White Blood Cells to Treat Your Cancer” (Matthew Dons)

December 6, 2023
Discussion at: community.cancerpatientlab.org
Full transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h...

00:00:02 - Cancer treatment options with medical disclaimers
00:01:13 - Immunotherapy in Japan for cancer treatment
00:02:50 - Colon cancer treatment options with a personal story
00:07:09 - Cancer treatment in Japan with a focus on immunotherapy
00:14:11 - Cancer treatment using white blood cell therapy
00:20:46 - Cancer immunotherapy and checkpoint inhibitors
00:25:35 - Immunotherapy and cancer progression
00:32:26 - Personalized immunotherapy for cancer treatment
00:39:39 - Cancer treatment outcomes for patients with multiple treatments
00:44:01 - Cancer treatment strategies with a focus on immunotherapy
00:50:26 - Cancer treatment options and their effectiveness.
00:57:49 - Immunotherapy for cancer treatment in Japan

“When you think about the cancer, you've got your immune system, and cancer does immunosuppression. That means it generally weakens your immune system, particularly the number of white blood cells produced.” – Matthew Dons

“I strongly, strongly believe that I'm alive because of multiple treatments, especially multiple treatments at the same time, and especially choosing treatments that are not going to trash my immune system too much.” – Matthew Dons

“The standard care in Japan is much higher for cancer. It's probably just a few years ahead of the US, but maybe 10 years ahead of the UK.” – Matthew Dons

Meeting Summary
Among the treatment options that advanced cancer patients may consider, immunotherapies have the major advantage that they can lead to very durable responses (a “cure”), while most other therapies work for a while, then fail. Cancer treatments tend to be toxic or invasive. Sadly, they are often ineffective. Immunotherapies have many advantages, but they are newer than traditional treatments like surgery or chemotherapy, so are harder to access. An international search, including Japan, can uncover more treatment options and more access, especially to immunotherapies.

Matthew Dons, Director of Make Cancer History, is uniquely qualified to talk about a global search for cancer treatments, and especially immunotherapies. When he was diagnosed with stage IV (metastatic) colon cancer in 2016 at the age of 36, it seemed unlikely he’d live more than a year. Seven years later he’s still doing well, thanks to a treatment based around boosting his immune system by growing his own white blood cells. Matthew is neither a doctor nor a researcher; he is an example of what we call a “super patient”. He has studied immunotherapies extensively to guide his own care.

Why should you consider growing your white blood cells to treat your cancer?
Immunotherapies (a treatment leveraging your immune system), such as growing your white blood cells to treat your cancer, offer one of the best paths to a durable response -- they are fighting a biological system (your cancer) with another system (your immune system), rather than the hit-and-miss, less durable approach of targeting a biomarker with a single drug or poisoning your cancer with chemotherapy. Certain immunotherapies offer a treatment option to nearly every cancer patient because they are neither targeted to a specific “tissue of origin”, like lung cancer or colon cancer, nor are they targeted to a biomarker, a protein that your cancer cells overexpress, like BRCA or EGFR.

The medical term for growing your white blood cells to treat your cancer – autologous adoptive cell transfer – is a mouthful of medical jargon.
● Autologous: using your cells to treat your disease, a Latin term meaning “from your body”
● Adoptive cell transfer: taking your healthy cells, e.g., white blood cells, growing them in a lab, then putting them back into your blood
● Apheresis: the name for the process that takes your blood, runs it through a machine to separate out one or more constituents, and returns the remainder back to you

Other topics discussed:
Growing your white blood cells is different from other immunotherapies you may have heard of and considered.
What are principles for long-term survival from cancer?
How can immunotherapies be enhanced?
Why should you consider getting your immunotherapy in Japan?

Make Cancer History is a non-profit organization based in Tokyo with one aim: to cure cancer all over the world.

The information and opinions expressed on this website or platform, or during discussions and presentations (both verbal and written) are not intended as health care recommendations or medical advice by Cancer Patient Lab, its principals, presenters, participants, or representatives for any medical treatment, product, or course of action. You should always consult a doctor about your specific situation before pursuing any health care program, treatment, product or other course of action that might affect your health.