Doctors Reveal the Hidden Truth About Cancer Screening | Dr. Papasotiriou & Dr. Davis | Ep. 74

Introduction to Cancer Prevention and Liquid Biopsy 0:00

The US spends per cancer patient 53,000 US dollars compared to the UK which costs 12, 000 US Dollars for similar treatments. The problem is we don't spend the money on the things that we should spend money to truly get people better. Eventually every country has to decide what is worth to save the pot of the insurance or the lives of their patients. I think the answer to that should be pretty easy. Joining us today is our co-host, Dr. Christopher Davis, CMO of Liquivita, who is an interventional cardiologist, and our guest, Doctor Ioannis Papasotiriou.

Founder and medical director of RGCC. He's a global leader in personalized cancer diagnostics, using advanced genetic testing to guide targeted treatment. We can detect cancer at stage zero by doing something that's called a liquid biopsy. Dr. Davis, when he started doing the RGCC test, he brought it up to me and said, Sam, doing a Liquid biopsies, I've been able to really catch things very early. What I loved about Rgcc, not only did they allow us to look for circulating tumor DNA, they had options on how we could potentially greet these cancers as well.

is the reason why we have focused mainly for screening purposes to see so that we will pick them up way earlier and in a stage which you can reverse. How many products and drugs have you guys actually put through that process and tested? From the conventional it's approximately Welcome to another episode of a healthy point of view podcast. I'm your host Sam Tahata. And like always, we're bringing experts in health, wellness, beauty, and mindset onto the podcast, so we'll bring in experts from all over the world today.

This this guess it originated from Greece. And one of the things we're going to be talking about today is that big C letter word that none of us like to hear cancer, right? So when we talk about prevention, early detection, and then also treatment intervention, that early Detection is very, very important and key. What if I told you that we can detect cancer at stage zero by doing something that's called a liquid biopsy? What is that? Today you're going to learn more about it. This is some of the forward thinking type of things that are out there when it comes to medicine.

And guys, sometimes it's not here in the U S sometimes we got to go outside of country to be able to get that definitive type care that we're looking for today. Who we have here is Dr. Jonas. Welcome. Really pleasure to be here. Absolutely. And part of this, we also have Dr. Christopher Davis as co-hosts. You guys know Dr Davis, he comes on a lot of the different podcasts. He's my business partner, Chief Medical Officer of Liquivita, who's been doing a lots of testing for cancer called the RGCC Cancer Test.

So Dr. Davis, thank you for being here to, you know, tackle this one with me. We're going to get a little bit scientific today with, with the cancer testing. So thank. Absolutely. Looking forward to having a great conversation. Dr, so you come all the way here for us to talk about the RGCC. First question I got for you is like, what, w what does R GCC stand for? Well, RGTC is an acronym, stands for Research Genetic Cancer Center. It's a group of laboratories located in different locations, mainly in Europe, but as well outside of them.

And all of them, they work in the field of liquid biopsy, as well as drug development against cancer. So the feel is everything around cancer, OK? So what made you get into this, into the fields of cancer? But you have to have some kind of story behind that to make you say, you know what? I want to do this cancer Well, everyone has its personal story. So I'm not an exception. First, a little bit about me. I am a physician, which primarily I decide to go and specialize in human genetics. But then it was very early, so genetic was almost unknown to the world.

So I have then decided to, let's say, specialize in hematology oncology in German speaking countries, in Germany practically. Then there you realize the hard reality of oncologist. you spend a lot of time with all patients together in a ward or in this station, as we call it in Germany, station. At that time, there were protocols of lasting of two years, like the Holzer protocol for leukemias, for example. And eventually you lose many of your patients after a devastating protocol, one after the other treatment with these cases.

Then you realize that you have to deal with hundreds, if not thousands of types of cancer with very few means, with few tools on diagnosis, even fewer treatment options. That was the time which I realized that it was an unfair fight. You have do something. And of course, personal story, you have someone in your family, very close one, which either suffer or you lose them. Which makes this need even more strong.

RGCC Background and Early Cancer Detection 6:00

So then I put all the knowledge and all of the technology that I have been familiar with from genetics. And I start working on what actually drives the disease. This is the beginning of RGCC. And I'll tell you, on my end, the way I found out about RGCC is through Dr. Davis. And, you know, all of us have either friends or family members that we hate getting that news when they get diagnosed with cancer. But the worst part is when you have a family or friend that comes and tells you they have been diagnosed where you start questioning, well, what happened to stage one, two, and three?

So we all know that disease hides very well. And one of the things Dr. Davis, when he started doing the RGCC test, he brought it up to me and said, Sam, this is incredible what's happening. We're able, I've been able to see some of these, doing liquid biopsy. I've been able to really catch things very early, especially people that are having issues with the toxins and the environment that is producing some of these things. So Dr. Davis, I want you to kind of talk a little bit about your experience utilizing RGCC and when you first started using it, And then let's go in and ask Dr.

Jonas some questions and figure out, they really share this information because I think this is a change in the course of medicine here. Yeah, I agree. I tell most of my patients that people don't want to die from three things, the things that they fear the most. People don t want a heart attack and die. They don't want to have dementia and they don' want it after cancer. And so when I think about being proactive in medicine, those are the three things that I'm always looking at. How do I bring more to my clientele from a preventative perspective?

And what ended up happening, I was doing another test out of Germany called IGL, which is no longer available. But IGL was a test that allows us to look at these toxins that were bound to genes, specific chromosomal loci. But it also measures something called circulating free DNA, which I didn't even know what circulating pre-DNA was. It turns out that circulating-free DNA could be one of the forms of circling-pre- DNA. Something called circulating tumor DNA which, I don't know anything about that either.

And reading about it further, I understood that, OK, this person's circulating free DNA levels may be high, and I need to figure out if this is related to cancer or not. The story is that the guy had a father who had renal cell cancer. And what I found in that test that I was doing was a toxin bound to a gene that encoded for reno cell. So he didn't have a jean for cancer, but he had. A toxa that was bound that specific gene for cell cancers. So I felt like I needed to take the next step. What's the step in me trying to figure out whether this person had cancer or not?

I mean, could he have cancer? And so I started to look out there and I learned about liquid biopsy. And there were several companies out and RGCC was one of them. Um, and what I loved about R GCC, I'm sure we can talk about this later, is not only did they allow us to. Look for circulating tumor DNA or CT DNA, um, or circulating tumors cells. they had options on how we could potentially treat these or at least address these cancers as well. Meaning they would be able to test specific markers that tell you what type of chemotherapeutic agents to use, what types of natural products to us, and even more so that there were other options.

At the time it was called SOT therapy. Another way that we can address those cancers So it wasn't just about making the diagnosis. If I found something, what could we do about it? And so that was really how I got started with me, and I actually did their courses to get certified to do the testing. And I can tell you, looking back on this now over the last year or so, it's been incredible. The number of people that we've detected things like pink prostate cancer, lots of prostate cancers that nobody had ever made a diagnosis of, but we saw the circulating tumor cells and the beautiful part about it is utilizing some of the strategies and some other natural products because I'm not an oncologist cardiologist.

Using some of the natural products that they showed me based on the labs and based, incubating the cells with these natural, they show me exactly what we should use for these patients and the circulating tumor cells numbers decreased out. I mean, we have a couple of them now. They've gone down to zero circulating to themselves based off of. what we learn from their results. And so just incredible when we talk about being proactive. I knew this was something you and I talked about the other companies that were out there a number of times, right?

Right. Right? And I think the difference is, it's not just finding it is what do I do with this, and this is kind of what he was just saying earlier, too. The treatment for cancer, for most cancers, even with chemotherapeutics, it's a lot of guesswork that goes into it. And it doesn't have to be the guess work, right? And so that's where this test kind of comes in. I've been using it since, and it has been incredible. So, I mean, you want to talk a little bit about your background in the genetics part, because I think the new screening test that you guys have has a lots to do with gene expression with the genes that are typically associated with cancers, with oncodeclare.

You want talk about that? Well, yes, practically we have to consider that screening is addressed to healthy individuals. So to all humans that they are reaching in an age which we know that the chance to develop a malignancy is increasing or especially when they're in a high risk group. For example, there is a medical background in the family or they are living in an environment which they're exposed to known toxins which increase the risk of carcinogenesis. Then the question is that how we can identify that risk.

So are we going to seek, as you correctly said previously, the circulated tumor DNA? Are we gonna see the circulating tumor cells in the periphery? Or are going search other things that they are gonna give us even sooner an insight, whether the disease is going appear? There are major strategies here. So we have to understand that the tumour growth, the appearance of cancer is a process known as carcinogenesis. It takes years. to happen. But before that, we have a process which the normal cells are converted, are changing, and they are becoming cancerous.

This is what carcinogenesis is. So during that process, the first thing that happens inside the human body is that the immune system starts reacting already. The first step is the alteration that happens in the immune system of an individual. So this is first change that we can notice. This is reason why the OncoDeclare is actually detecting the changes of the immunos cells that they are coming in contact with abnormal cells in process of developing a cancer. Then, when the cancer cells appeared, already in a very small size, they disseminate.

They detached from the tiny 0.2 millimeter in diameter, so practically you cannot diagnose with conventional CT MRIs, etc. And yes, the CDCs exist in very early stage. And there are plenty of studies. One of them is of Dr. Patel, which found that circulated tumor cells exist bone marrow in stage one breast gastronoma. So practically the local disease may not even exist as an entity, as we say in the clinical practice. When the tumor takes a respect, relatively respectful size, then you have parts of the original primary tumor which becomes necrotic or other parts which they are secreting and other paths which are simply get to programmed death, the apoptosis as we know it.

The necrotic part of tumor releases pieces of DNA, this is the CT DNA the circulated tumor DNA. The part of the tumor which secretes this part the DNA, this is the clinical relevant. This is information or pieces of information that you can find from a blood sample. But it comes relatively later than the dissemination. So what comes first then? It's actually the alterations of the immune system. Then you have the presence of a circulated tumor cells and later on it comes the circulate tumor DNA in the periphery.

This is the reason why we have focused mainly for screening purposes to see what kind of alteration actually happens in 92 genes to the immunosystem cells. so that we will pick them up way earlier and in a stage which you can reverse it. Because carcinogenesis is only at the last step you have a confirmed cancer cells. Before that the process can be reversed or even dealt with. this plastic or anaplastic cells can either be excised or even get to programmed cell death as long as you, let's say, change your lifestyle or if you alter the microenvironment.

And this is what lifestyle will do. So this what actually we have done. OncoDeclare is detecting the alterations of the immune system. The on-code trace actually can detect the presence of circulated tumor cells and can be said can take the circulator tumor cell to the periphery. Already we can catch up all three parameters in every step of carcinogenesis. You said a very powerful word, you said reverse. which it's something that people are very careful saying that word here in the United States specifically.

And I know exactly what you're talking about, right? Now, what I wanna touch up on, because we're talkin' about the screening. The screening that you've developed, you and your team, versus conventional screening for cancer. What is the conventional screenin' for the cancer for listeners and viewers to understand? Well, screening in the mean of, let's say, high risk population is on specific types of or specific organ oriented cancers. For instance, colorectal carcinomas or neoplasma of the colon.

Screening, Carcinogenesis, and Immune Changes 18:00

We say that all people above 45 years old, they should done a colonoscopy preventative. So if we see alterations or findings there, then we do that more frequently until we will detect the disease. hoping that we are going to catch up the disease in early stage. Stage 1B, stage 1A, Stage 2. But still we need to have the If we don't find nothing, then we address to repeat that after five years. So if still the findings are negative, we go to the next five. This is what screening is with a very strict term of the word screening.

But there are no recommendations during that screening of what you could do if you find a polyp, which is benign. Can you reverse it? Can do something about it or you simply wait? So that cancer will appear at the end and then we start become active after the presence of the disease. So this is something that there is a gray area there. And imagine that sometimes during the interval between two classical screenings, You may not find the cancer in stage one B or one A, you may find in the considering stage three already spread it to the lymph nodes or even worse having a liver met somewhere.

So because carcinogenesis is slow, but as long as you have a malignant cell established, which is the third and final step of carcigenesis, then the growth becomes exponential. Right. So it's accelerated. So we assume that the process is linear, but in reality, it is by far not linear. And that's at that point is where it becomes very difficult to reverse. Correct. And I think you also missed the opportunity to emphasize to the person all of the things that they could do. I'll think the beauty of The Uncle DeClair, which is the screening test, is that there are lots of things you can do from a lifestyle perspective, meaning your nutrition, eating organic, assessing toxins, all the other things we need to do to potentially Reverse because essentially you don't have the carcinogenesis like you're talking about when we use our typical screenings that we used today in the United States, whether they're imaging or other serum biomarkers.

At that point, you already have cancer, right? What he's talking about is the ability to detect that immune system, those changes that occur, and that we can still do something about those change way earlier if we know that they're there. And so I think that it gives us some insight and gives your patients motivation to, hey, I got to make a change because my immune systems is seeing things that could be consistent with developing cancer. I mean, we're all, like I said, afraid of cancer, So having this type of information, I think is incredibly valuable for those who care about our health and say, Hey, look, you know, we need to it's kind of like a wake up call to try to address it earlier.

So this whole preventative whole prevention movement. I mean, this is a prime example of how we could be way upstream prior to any type of imaging modality. Right, right. Because you know, you hear about the people getting the full body MRIs now, to detect early, but this was just a whole different beast of a screening, when we're talking about screening for cancer. Now, around what age would we recommend someone to actually start going through the screening? Well, as I said, it depends of multiple parameters from the age first and especially the environment.

Environment means habits, working environment, what kind of toxins you are exposed to. What is your occupation? For example there are professions which we ignore that we came in contact with several chemicals which potentially they could become Like what I did for 12 years as a fireman. So practically there is nothing that you could say, oh, there's one rule which feeds for everyone. By the age, we know that from 50 years old and above, our body decay actually indicates that we should become more proactive on the screening side.

So yes, in general, above 50-years-old, We should start thinking to put screening on our agenda. But if we have, let's say, additional factors like the environment, the habits, or if have specific types of cancer in our family. For example, we may have in females a mother or a grandmother who appeared at breast or ovarian carcinoma in age younger than 40 years old. So probably this means that we may have a risk of hereditary type. So it's better the whole family, the bloodline to be tested. And not only female, this is something that, we can also have to think about.

For example, everyone's talking about the BRCA gene. Well, BRCA has been discovered for breast gastronoma, but in males can create other types of gastrinoma like pancreatic, for instance. So it doesn't mean that, yeah, it's only for one gender, one type, that it is for all bloodline of a family. Right. The screening has a broader meaning that should involve other people on the same family, But the hereditary types, thank God, they are the smaller percentage of population. The vast majority are sporadic.

So we have to consider that the environment plays the most critical role. This is where the lifestyle plays an equally important role, as long as we can reverse it, these chances are working in our favor instead of promoting the presence of the disease. Right. And that's kind of like Dr. Davis focusing on metabolic health. When something like that comes out early, you start focusing in on the on a person's metabolic. Yeah, I think it really just it allows us to start again. It's a wake up call. I.

Think it it. Allows people to. Start. We think of cancer as a metabolic disease as well. So obviously focusing on metabolic health, like we do with respect to cardiovascular and diabetes, but the same thing. Cancer can be addressed by focusing the metabolic parameters as well. Let's talk really quickly. I want to talk about, I wanted to ask you about There are lots of companies out there now that actually are doing this circulating tumor cells. And one of the questions I want you to talk about, if we can talk it in the layman's type perspective, the way you do your tests and the difference between negative selection and positive selection, and why one may be better than the other.

Well, that's not something new. That's very, very well established knowledge. When dissemination happens, which means few cells are actually detached from the tumors and they are spreading to the blood flow. It's actually a tiny number of cells. So it's what we call rare event. Looking needle in a haste, literally. If we try to find these cells, The original idea was, as long as we're talking about solid tumors, we assume that the vast majority are carcinomas, which means that they are coming from a tissue called epithelia.

So we assumed, at least originally, that we will have epitheelial proteins on the surface. So the original idea is that if we manage to use tools to find these proteins on the surface, we could separate the cells and find them. Down the road, we realized that the whole process of metastasis is not something which is very simple. They do not detach just by chance. they follow a specific mechanism. So the other cells, they are hiding this epitope. The start look like blood origin cells. This is what it's called EMT.

And not all circulated tumor cells, they appear this epitope. So practically if you say that, yeah, I'm going to use the one or the other protein just to push them up from the circulation, you're going lose those that they don't have it. And they may be the most important kind of cells. Um, and also as long as you, you want these cells, do you to take them out viable, vigorous and being able to process them. So, which means we need to grow them, we to analyze them so we don't need them dead. And these makes the thing very, very challenging.

so by definition then the positive selection failed. That was actually the reason why the first attempt of the golden standard method of isolation of CTCs has been failed, gave us really poor outcomes of identifying these cells. Then it came the idea to what if we subtract the normal cells of blood sample and leave what actually remains. Actually, this gave us really better results, but it's way more laborious process because at the end you conclude with all the disseminated cells, all their circulated tumor cells with, with the subsets included.

And then you have all the population of interest in your hands and you can process them. This is the major difference, which we actually followed at the early stage of developing of these tests. Because we had the same questions as everyone else. How we can, I can be able to isolate them, how I, can I be, able, to, isolate, them viable. Can I grow them? How fast they could grow? Because at, the end you conclude with 200s of cells in best case. how you could process and get all the information for them.

So by answering one question after the other, this is how all of the tests have been developed. We managed to grow them, how long you can grow so that they will keep the features of their original sampling, so they won't alter,

CTCs, Transcriptomics, and Treatment Matching 30:00

they'll give you credible information representing the human body as it was originally. So we figure it out that they can be grown. They can come to exponential phase of growth, but these growth cannot be longer than seven to nine days, because after that, yes, the cells can grow. but they are changing their genetic profile and they're not representing the original tumor site. So this is the parameters that we actually knew from the early development of the testing. That's why we consider that these tests as platform, as a set of analytical processes that they answer all these questions and provide the relevant information.

Then the immediate next question is that, right, I need to create treatment options for clinicians. How can I provide all this? So the first thing is that, yeah, any drug, no matter if it's conventional or natural products or extracts, they meant to block specific proteins inside the cells. This is it, this is how all medications are working. But proteins cannot be amplified, so they cannot multiplied, but genes can. This is where we figure it out that the gene expression can give us relatively good profile of what is the actual level of proteins inside the cells.

So this is why we include the transcriptomics, as we call it, the old genome expression profile. But again, there are exceptions of this, because not always the gene expression is in linearity, as we call it, with proteins. So this is where we put the viability assays. We expose the cells to the actual active form of a product, of the drug or a natural product. Because we know that most of the drugs, they are not active as they need to convert, take their active form inside the body, receive a specific concentration amount inside their bloodstream, and then they have to give you the outcome that we expect.

And this is exactly what is happening after the growth of the cells. So you have enough cells to do micro colonies and you could, micro cultures actually, be correct. And then you can expose to these cells, to this substance and see how effective it works. How many products and drugs have you guys actually put through that process and tested? Well, from the conventional quiver it's approximately 90-95 medications. From natural products it is approximately 80 at the time being. But the platform is expandable.

It can include other products as well. As long as we know how the substances are supposed to work. What is the actual mechanism of action? Let me say, let me just kind of break down one thing I think is really important to make sure the audience understands. When you were talking about the transcriptomics, one of the other very powerful abilities of this test is to if someone has a cancer, if they have a breast cancer or they had prostate cancer. The gene expression or transcriptomic gives us a lot of information about what specific genes are upregulated or downregulator that tells us about the potential aggressiveness of the tumor.

The potential to metastasize. So if you have a cancer, I just use prostate cancer because prostate cancers, people live with prostate caner until they are 90 or some people have aggressive prostate and they'll die from it in whatever, five, 10 years. What I find very helpful here is There's a we can take a lot of that guesswork out looking at some of the transcriptomics and understanding gene expression as to whether this is going to be an aggressive or likely to Be an Aggressive cancer more likely To metastasize or even drug resistance, right?

That's another gene. There are other genes on drug Resistance. And so I think that there's a lot of pieces here that give you insight into what to do for each individual patient, as opposed to, you know, I Think there is a shotgun approach in medicine in general, but every single patient should be treated as an individual. And that's where I this test allows us to pick the therapy that is best for that individual Well, correct. Simply I didn't want to put that on a higher level, but this is the reality.

The transcriptomics allows us to see way above the medications. For example, we know that if specific genes are starting to produce proteins, they may be able to start highly packing your DNA. Well, what that means? That means that the tumor suddenly starts becoming very silent. It doesn't produce many proteins, they become very slow growing. Someone may think, oh, this is a good outcome. Actually, it isn't. This is the point where the tumor becomes what we call anaplastic. It starts losing features of the original tissue that it comes from.

And then it becomes very, very resistant because there are no targets for many medications. These type of cells, they develop several proteins, as you correctly said, of resistance, pumping out all the medications that you can provide to these type cells. They start hiding targets for many medications simply because the DNA is highly packed, so there are no mRNAs. Essentially there are no proteins available to be blocked. These type of cells become very self-dependent. They do not interact with the outer environment.

So practically you cannot treat the cancer through the micro environment and this is the point where the tumor becomes very, very resistant and essentially aggressive. So this is one piece of information. Another set of genes are related with the ability of the cancer cells to metastasize. For example there are specific receptors which when they start appearing means expressed, the relevant gene, it's the first step of initiation of being able to invade entering to the bloodstream and migrate to a distant organ, which means the risk of metastasis becoming extremely high.

So these are the things that we can see through the transcriptomics already. And this actually defines when we should think to start treating more aggressively the tumor or we start thinking to put physical interventions. We must not forget cancer is not only treatable with infusions, it can be equally treated by physical intervention, hypothermic ablations, etc. Also there are many ways which you can resensitize that. For instance, yes, methylation is actually one of the mechanisms of DNA that makes the cells very resistant and aggressive.

On the other hand, there many nutraceuticals which actually can demethylate your DNA. Actually you CAN resenitise. your tumor. So it's not always treating the cancer himself. You can make the cancel more prominent to respond to a therapy. We must also consider that as an option. Transcripts can give us a lot of information besides the known targets for medication. Well, and there's a lot to digest here because this is this, is new, this. Is new for a. Lot of people and a, lot of. People that are listening to this are not have not been exposed to.

This, which leads me to the next question. The type of screening and also this type plan that's developed with the different products and drugs to target this cancer, the tumor. When do you think that this is going to become a standard protocol, right? As, as where it becomes a main, I know it's a loaded question here, where becomes mainstream, but becomes standard in the world of oncology here in The United States. Well, um, For United States, I cannot have an opinion, but I can have and opinion for Europe.

Because all of us, we were really thrilled and jumped from joy when officially from the ESMO guidelines, which is pretty much the organ which defines what the oncology physician should do. put on the plan what is called molecular multidisciplinary team or personalized approach. And they gave already a map which defines roles of different physicians and specialties on how we could use genetics, liquid biopsy, molecular techniques, precision medicine, so that we will have literally tailor-made therapy for a single individual.

But this is a plan. Until it comes to reality, to average people, I don't believe that it will come short in time. It will take a long period because we need to restructure all our healthcare systems from the beginning, which means Multiple physicians should come in contact, they should exchange information. We need to start interpreting lab results which are coming from genetics or several other laboratories. we should take the diagnostics as we use it in our regular practice, combine all this data and do reality what is called translational medicine, which is very difficult.

So I have to think very optimistic to that direction, but in reality, I believe it will take time. But at least we acknowledge that this is the way. Are you seeing oncologists here in the US doing more of your tests or not as much? Well, as far as I know, because In practicality, we want to think more on the direction of personalized medicine. And as far as I know, in the US the NCCN guidelines are those who actually define what the medical oncologist or the oncologists should do. The last years we have seen that they do include personalized medicine approaches on their protocol, which means that the first steps already taken place.

So it's a matter of time when they will start implement all these practices. But as I said, it is not something that happens in a day. Unfortunately, in medicine, especially in oncology, these processes are taking time. Can you speak to any clinical data that you have comparing utilizing RGCC testing strategies and treatment strategies to standard of care? Well, we know that many they come out and they say, oh, what's the sensitivity? What's specificity of a test? Well, for let's say a single parametric test, when you test one parameter, yes, it has a meaning to talk about sensitivity and specificity.

But when we're talking about very complex tests, the assessment should be more on the clinical side. And that means that in oncology, the clinical parameters that we should think of is, do we see a benefit to the overall survival? Do we response rates better with one test guided therapy compared to standard of care? We see improvement or prolongation of time to relapse when a patient reaches remission. These are the parameters that we should test. And this is exactly what we have done. Recently, it has been published in a study in colorectal carcinoma, which we compare the best supportive care on late stage colo-rectal with another group which they follow treatment based on the test that we offer.

And the study reveals that the best supportive care had an overall survival of 5.8 months, and the group, which actually followed the treatment, based the on test we have offered to the physicians, actually doubled the overall survive.

Clinical Evidence and Personalized Oncology 45:00

wow and another one is coming with better outcomes in pancreatic asthma and we continuously challenge and always do this kind of test because at the end science is science but we have to treat patients we need the clinical data yeah yeah dr pete You're obviously a very extremely smart individual and besides being smart, you're very passionate and I can feel it. And there was one of the things when I was reading about you is that you decided not to take any investors into the RGCC. You decided, I believe it was, and correct me if I'm wrong, you took 85% of your net income and reinvested it into that company to research and everything else.

I want to talk about that. You know, a lot of the times, especially right now, we have a movement here, Make America Healthy Again. And one of big things talks about the people that are involved in the medical system and the health care system here in U.S. and how it becomes very corrupt, right? What was your reasoning to not take investors? Well, for me, I try to stay to the original goal. As I said, or I start moving creating our GCC by the motive that first we need to create tools for clinicians to make clinical decisions and do personalized medicine reality.

But the ultimate goal is to generate more treatment options, which means novel medications against cancer. Not only the few drugs that we have, but to have at least an equal number of medications compared to the type of cancer that exists out there. Well, drug development is a very long and very laborious process because RGCC is not only about the testing, Actually, this is the front page. The vaccine, which is major work, is actually we use all the real-world data from patients derived which are anonymized.

and we find novel draggable targets, which means novel targets to block. And we develop novel chemicals or novel molecular antibodies or even advanced therapies against specific targets which are completely new for several types of cancer. If you want to follow in that course without altering it, There's no other way. Imagine if you put an investor and investor should seek quick profits. This doesn't happen on drug development. If you want to stay there. The only solution is to take the hard way, reinvest your profits back to your research.

That's exactly what is happening. Right, right. So there's a whole nother level to this, not just the detection, but to come up with the novel therapies based on what you guys see in the genetics and the transcript on that actually. Right. Yeah. Very impressive. I didn't know that that part was going on. Was that the intention when you set up the company? Was it really to develop novel drugs? Well, at the beginning it's not like a dream because drug development requires too many different disciplines to put them under one roof.

So you need medicinal chemists, you needs biologists, mathematicians, bioinformaticians because imagine the human genome is a little bit less than 30,000 genes. Right now we have data from approximately 109,000 samples, each one of them with 30,00 genes, you need a lot of processing. So you have massive data to process. And then as long as you find a repeatable pattern for a specific type of cancer on a certain stage with specific conditions, then you start thinking, where is this target? Can I create a chemical molecule?

Or can I use a monoclonal antibody if it's on the surface or it is excreted from the cell? Is there any natural product that I could start working and modified so that i will create a better blockade to the target and make it more specific? Because let's not fool ourselves. The vast majority of the drugs that we have right now in oncology They are what we call ligand-based drug design, which means there is a natural product out there which has the original structure and we simply modify it and create a chemical molecule which is synthetic and it's an issue of pattern.

Now, Doug, when you talk about this massive amount of data that you guys have to go through, we live in a very digital world where we're using AI and artificial intelligence. Are you, guys, actively utilizing AI for this mass of amount Well, one of the many reasons why the headquarters and actually the data processing is in Switzerland is because the level of data protection and as well as the utility of AI is extremely high. So AI can become a very powerful tool, but it requires very good discipline.

What do you mean by that? Well, if you ask my informaticians, which they are using AI, for example, of modeling a protein or do big data analysis in order to find repeatable patterns. AI is a very powerful tool with specific limits and rules. If these rules do not exist, you have a higher chance to conclude with what is called AI hallucination. So eventually you get a data which doesn't represent reality. And this is critical in pharmaceutical industry. You cannot have the luxury of making mistakes.

Right. Yes, the AI is a powerful tool. For example, if you want to to give you something that the people ignore. When you block a protein to create a novel drug and you discover that, yeah, this protein plays critical role, so it's essential to block it. The next step is how this product looks like. So we know only the sequence of DNA which is actually encoded. If we do not have what we call crystallography of the protein, we have to construct it. So you have one difficult way to do that in the lab, which will take time, money, and you may not succeed it, Or you can do a modeling.

This is where the AI can become helpful. For example, many labs, including here in the US, they are using the alpha fault version two, which is a completely AI product. Well, not all times can give you an accurate structure of the protein and start the drug development. So you need to be very, very disciplined of what data you're going to use. And there's a lot to it. Yeah, I can't even imagine. How do you know? I mean, this sounds so complex. So you're looking at the protein folding structure, right?

And somebody has to be wise enough to know when you say discipline, if the AI comes out with an incorrect protein structure then you have to have chemists or whoever that was able to realize that. I guess that's what you were saying. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's why the humans will never be outside of the equation, no matter how optimistic we could be. So for example, I've seen that many times happening in my lab in Veniceville. One of my or actually most of mine medicinal chemists there are there really experiences very smart.

So when the the software gives a structure, they even by look the protein, how it looks like they could tell you, oh, this is realistic. And this could become a druggable target, or this doesn't fit, leave it out for this and this in this reason. artificial intelligence can process massive data very fast. What the human mind do is making intuition of it, which AI cannot do that. Okay. And this comes with experience. This comes what the the lame people use is gut feeling which comes with experience knowledge and how you put your knowledge further so these are the limits of the AI you cannot use only that or only the other you have to bring them both very interesting So, Doc, you know, You mentioned earlier that you have about 90 pharmaceuticals, give or take, and then a lot of some of these natural products that that.

You see how they function against the cells. Have you guys tested? I'm going to go into the world of bio quantum right now. How do you get tested, any frequencies directly with cells? Well, Actually, there is a group of physicians in the German speaking countries, which they are working in that field. We are discussing of how it is possible to make a model of it and actually assess this. There are many technical challenges, I have to say that, because To put a frequency just to see how it interacts with the cells, it may sound very simplistic, but actually it's not because the old concept of putting the frequency in the cell, the sales are living in a hydrogel as we call it, because they are growing in 3D culture.

how this frequency interacts with the surrounding microenvironment and what is the actual frequency that hits the cells and which part of the cell are interfering, this is a challenging point. And we haven't figured it out precisely. Because we have to say the truth. There's no perfect laboratory testing. So far it's the best thing that we can do with technology means that have so far. If things will be improved from the technology perspective, we will do steps forward. This is how science is moving.

There are limits with frequencies. We cannot replicate so good the efficacy of frequencies in a cellular level. How fast do you feel that the science is moving currently with the technologies we have versus about 20 years ago? Massively. If I can tell you that, the first, if I could say, I cannot use the term microfluidic because today it is a microffluidics flow cytometry. At that age, a flow-cytometer, it was in the size of a room It didn't use lasers, it used monochromators, which you use massive cooling system and the accuracy was by far lower of what we have today.

And nowadays you could have a flow cytometer in the size of a printer in a corner of your desk and you can do acquisitions on samples. So the technology has moved really ahead. But it depends where the need is. So yes, when we start to realize the value of rare events of liquid biopsy of CTCs, the funds of technology development put in to these kinds of technologies. But imagine, before that, even speaking about liquid biopsy, you consider this as a charlatan. They stone you in the central square of the city.

So nowadays, everyone is talking about, oh, liquid by biopsies. It's something known. We know that. This is how science is going. We kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, kind alluded to it, but I want to give you an opportunity, because I wanna hear this as well, to compare RGCC's evaluation, say we're talking about the otherwise healthy individuals as a cancer screen, comparing it to some of the other larger name tests out there. Maybe I shouldn't say names, but I want you to compare and contrast.

And I wanted you be honest about it. I mean, where our RGCC may be better and where RRG CC may not be based on some of the other tests that are out. Well, um, usually to make a comparison, you need to compared apples with apples. Comparing apple with oranges is not fair and it's not mathematically correct. And to make a comparison, it is NOT correct simply because the vast majority of the screening tests that exist out there is actually based on circulated tumor DNA detection. Our method is based upon detecting alteration on the immune cells on the gene expression level, so it's completely different ways.

But from the physiology perspective, the alteration of the immune system takes place earlier than the release of CT DNA.

AI, Drug Development, and Future of Precision Medicine 1:00:00

And this is known in cancer physiology. So practically you can catch up earlier these kind of alterations way before the presence of tumor compared to the CTDNA. This is the only thing that I can say based on the evidence. All the rest it would be personal opinion and it wouldn't be fair too. Right, right. And you're not comparing apples to apples. That's a good point. Very good. With everything that you guys are doing and developing, look at it looking at this from a financial perspective on what it can do when it comes to the treatments.

Do you see this actually saving money for people in the long term? Well, this is a big debate in Europe as well. I don't know if you have heard. But I know that HTA doesn't exist even as a term in the US. Recently, actually from the 12th of January this year, all health care systems in EU, they are obligated to provide what is called health technology assessment for every treatment available to patients. The reason of this is to find what is the cost clinical benefit ratio. Which originally it seems very nice.

Because everyone we assume that we are going to see the ratio in benefit of the clinical side. Well actually it's not. It depends of what the healthcare system of every country decides to do. Are they going to save the let's say the insurance money, or they are intent to say, the health care level of the population. And we have seen both extremities in Europe. Really, for example, In the UK, there is an independent body called NICE, which defines based on the cost which kind of medication, even approved medications to be available to the population, simply because a cost may not be so comfortable to health care system, to insurance.

On the other hand, based upon the legal structure of Germany or Austria, they decide that they should be in the benefit of the population. So the cost comes as a second priority. And this is the reason why we see two different approaches. But eventually it shows that because the people actually uses the healthcare, but actually they pay more as contribution to the insurance, the health care coverage. The German healthcare system is on better financial statement compared to the British one simply because many UK citizens, they seek solutions abroad, which means that they are paying way more seeking solution outside the country.

So this is what we see in Europe and I'm assuming that HDA is coming to, or at least with a different name, but the principle would be the same. We are going to see that happening to many countries. So eventually every country has to decide what is worth to save. the pot of the insurance, all the lives of their patients. I think the answer to that should be pretty easy, though. You would hope. That should a pretty straightforward answer, right? We need to be fair here, because if we put ourselves in the, let's say, the ministry of health shoes, we have to consider that the resources of every healthcare system, no matter how rich the country is, it's not infinite.

You have specific resources and you need to be very wise how to use them. So you cannot spend money here and there for nothing. But being wise of being in favor of let's say of an insurance pot are two different things. I think that the issue here though is And even in Europe, the United States, both, if we were to spend the money on what truly helps people get better, then the incremental costs of insurance would eventually go down. The problem is we don't spend money the things that we should spend on to truly get people better.

And that's my opinion with respect to looking at the underlying root causes of these diseases, or even when you have a test like your test. At the end of the day, think about the number of people that, if they get diagnosed with cancer, right? And how many chemotherapeutic regimens are there? What are they used to choose those regiments? Wouldn't it be much more cost effective if we made a decision based on that individual's expression of specific genes and a therapy that's tailored for them. To me, now I don't waste money spending it on a chemotherapeutic agent that doesn't work, and then I'm going to have to go to the next one, the the one in the other one.

It's just sometimes I think we think about the technology and the ability to truly look at why people are sick. And it's easier for us to give drugs. I call it band-aid medicine, I mean, it is what it. If we would have truly looked at truly what we wanted to get people better, If it on the top end, we would save money, but we just don't. That's not the way the system set up. Well, actually, you're absolutely right. By chance, I'm teaching in a master program of the medical and pharmaceutical university in Greece by distance.

And I am teaching exactly this. And actually the statistics reveals that US spends per cancer patient, 53,000 US dollars compared to the UK, which cost 12,00 US Dollars and compared with Germany who pays 14, 000 dollars for similar treatments. Wow. So, and this is the major question, why US spends four times more for relatively similar outcomes? So I believe there are plenty of parameters. One is what you say. And the second is that the cost of medications is actually higher. When you pay royalties, when you import the, let's say the patented products in a country.

There are many things behind which they need to be rectified. I had one specific slide which shows the difference, and it's really shocking when you see that. I always have a slide that talks about the United States, the amount of money spent per capita, we're number one in the number of spent, but somewhere like number 40 with respect to the quality of care that we are receiving in United That just speaks volumes to how we need to change the system and how the costs are set up. If we have that much money to spend, if we were to just spend that money, what truly makes...

One of the frustrating things for me is I take care of a lot of patients and I do toxin testing and micronutrient testing, none of which are covered by the insurance company. But guess what? At the end of day, those are the things that are getting my patients better, but it doesn't get covered If we were to spend those dollars on the things that truly are going to help me show my patient why they're sick, then we wouldn't have this healthcare crisis and chronic illness crisis that we have in America today.

At the end of the day, we go back on ancient times, which it's better to prevent instead of treating. When someone suffers from a severe chronicle disease, It's going to be a very hard task to treat them, even to put the disease in a chronical stage, compared to prevent the diseases, which even from cost perspective, it's gonna be cheaper and easier. So this is basic knowledge from known years ago. Yeah. You know, that's why I put a lot of emphasis on those three stages. Prevention, early detection and treatment intervention.

you want to keep yourself on the prevention side. It's a must. So what's on your wish list for the future? Wish list? Where do you wanna see this go? fulfilling the goal, which means offering more treatment options to cancer patients. That's it. So as long as I can work and breathe, this is it! how do we get this test more known about in the United States? How do you get other doctors to utilize this to be aware of it? I guess one of the things is to do podcasts like this. But from my perspective, again, a cardiologist who kind of deals with this is I still feel weird when I remember four or five years ago, you couldn't talk me into dealing with any cancer patients.

But I think the way you guys have put this together for me on the prevention and health and wellness, I didn't have a choice because I felt like I've not seen anything that just kind gave me the precision to deal with each one of these patients. And I'm not even an oncologist. It's not to say that we don't need oncologists. They still need the oncology, right? Absolutely. But I think that if more doctors were to buy into and understand this type of technology and watch how medicine changes, we could really make an impact on the kind of care that were delivering.

So I would just implore any of the physicians or practitioners that are listening, like we really need to get this kind information out there to everybody. Well, that's a very nice wish, which I'm with you. But as I said to the beginning, nothing in medicine changes very fast. So we have to accept that this will take time, more and more physicians to become aware and feel comfortable. Because to find a disease or to fight the high-risk population is one thing. Then the next scary questions from the clinical perspective is what to do next?

Many of us or many of the physicians, they don't know what do afterwards. It came a piece of paper which says, yes, you have the risk to develop malignancy or this type of malingancy. What should I do now? Because then many other issues are arising. If you do not have the disease detectable on a specific size, A medical oncologist will not treat or don't do anything. That's it. So what it should be done from the other side, from from, the GPs or from other physicians, which they are into the preventative side.

Right. These are the things that they need to cover and have standardized approach so that we will achieve the wishing goal of literally reversing the risk. This is a lot, this is, I love this, because this the future of medicine. This is the future of medicine. And this is, uh, the direction that we need to go, go in. Yeah. I always say that, you know, this science of science is 25 years ahead of the medicine that practice. Unfortunately for all of it, that the time that it takes, just like you said, nothing moves fast.

So by the, something like this makes it to our guidelines. We're looking at 20, 25 for something that happens, but. Fortunately, we have the ability to still utilize and help our patients. And that's what I think people should realize that we don't have to necessarily wait until if I can save a life, I'm going to save life. I think that the way technology is moving and as fast as it is with the AI, although we do have to check AI like you said, things are moving so fast that to continue to work in a place where we're following guidelines from 20 years ago, for me, it doesn't make common sense to me.

And I've just seen enough in my patients that and what we do for them and people who you find prostate cancer before the oncologist. And what he just said was exactly right, right? When you found some of these tests that test positive for likely for circulating tumor cells that are that or consistent with prostate, cancer, but you don't see any prostate. Cancer and PSA is normal. Guess what? No oncologists know you're all nobody's nobody is doing anything about it. Right. So that's unfortunate, but what RGCC has done is it allows a practitioner like myself, who's not an oncologist, to figure out what the next step is.

And so it's just about educating yourself through all their platforms and you figure what you do next. Right. Dr. P, as we start wrapping up here on the interview, If there's one person out there that's listening to this podcast or watching this podcasts and resonates with your message, what would you leave them with? Well, What message is that?

Cost of Care, Prevention, and Closing Thoughts 1:15:00

First, don't give up. The reason why I'm saying this is that I have seen many patients because they are following different paths. They are changing course of action during their journey with this disease or during treatment of this But eventually they should try all the time. There is no dead ends. Or at least they shouldn't let it go. Also, we have to consider that we need to help patients of today as well as patients tomorrow. So that means that Every sample that it's analyzed today may generate a solution, a hope, and a door for patients of tomorrow.

This is it. So I believe this is the message that we should take care of. Absolutely. Dr. P, I started working on my third book and it is called Your Wellness Data. And it's all about the purpose of the book is for people to be able to empowered by understanding their wellness data in a variety of different wellness state of your wearables like an or we ring your Apple watch, understanding your blood work, your epigenetic testing, doing stuff like VO to Max. But what I would love to have is you be part of that book as well, too, and have a chapter on talking about the importance of doing this screening.

So that's something that I'd love include into the book. As we wrap up here, where can people find you? Well, We do have, let's say, a subsidiary here in the US. Easily someone can find us through the web, which our website has all their contact details. Also, we publish a lot, so if someone has a need to search the scientific background, Either they could have access to all the peer review articles that we have published around our science and what we are doing in the clinical field by assessing all of the technologies.

Or if someone can go to these platforms like ResearchGate or PubMed and put my name there, definitely they will come. And Dr. Davis, I'll let you close out here by kind of just recapping and letting the listeners and viewers kind really take it home. Yeah. I mean, for everybody listening, this is an incredibly, incredibly powerful tool that I think, cancer is a disease that nobody wants to have. All of us dread even thinking about it. But whether we're talking about this as just a screening test, which we've been talking a lot about prevention, it's incredibly helpful.

But more important, I think that what Dr. P was just saying about don't give up, you know, and my opinion right now, this type of testing and strategy and guidance that they are able to provide far surpasses any any type The therapies that you know, in the integrative space, the functional medicine space. You know there are a lot of people with vitamin C for cancer or this for Cancer or curcumin. And I never wanted to get into that type of we can try this and try, this, and this try and trying things really doesn't work for me.

I think that what one of the things that is incredibly impactful here is that We don't have to try things when you have a test that is actually incubating the circulating tumor cells with all these specific agents, and they give you percentages of the effectiveness of these agents. So really, anybody who's suffering from cancer, I think you should consider this RGCC test as a way of giving you a little bit of guidance. Find a practitioner. I'm sure on the website they have a list of practitioners that utilize it in the United States as well as abroad.

But give yourself a chance to make an informed decision about what those therapies could look like. So I just don't like to end on that. I mean, I would like just thank you for coming. This has been a really pleasure for me because, you know, finding this test and starting to utilize it. And I've been able to impact a lot of people's lives. Uh, and it's with people like you have the heart to bring this tests to the world. Um, uh, And just hope to get it out to more people, to let them know that, okay, there are cancer, such a disease where everybody just, want to bury your head or it the end of the word, but it doesn't have to be right.

So. Thank you for coming. I have to thank you for giving me this chance to expose you data that stays in the lab most of the time to the people, really. And Dr. P, us coming together collectively in this industry is allowing a lot of us to live our purpose, right? Because living our purposes, and I speak for myself here, is being able to help that next person. And as you mentioned, right, it's not about the patients of today, but it is also about patients tomorrow. We think about our kids, our kid's kids in the future, and how we can allow them to live a better, more optimal life when it comes to their health.

So I truly appreciate what you've done. I think that this is just the beginning. in us working together with the different relationships that we have. I think we can truly make a huge, huge difference. Thank you. You so much. Awesome. Guys, you guys heard it. This podcast was definitely much different than what we usually talk about. You know, we talk about the prevention, early detection, treatment and prevention. This is a test that everybody should do, right? We hear family members, friends, they approach us and they get diagnosed with that C word, cancer.

Things are changing when it comes to health, wellness and medical. I want you to further look into this Write us, share this. This is how we're going to truly change the course of medicine.