Video: Personalized Cancer Care: The Power Of Precision Testing

Introduction to RGCC and Dr. Cohen 0:00

Today. I am very excited about our next speaker. Welcome to the Breast Cancer Breakthroughs Summit. We have interviewed many doctors with many powerful breakthroughs when it relates to breast cancer. But today, you are going to hear about a type of testing that can literally transform your healing journey. I used it for over ten years. Professionally, I recommended it. Personally, I used it in my second healing journey. And today, I've got Dr. Lauren Cohen. She has been in a healing practice as a chiropractor with functional medicine and emotional healing.

But then something very interesting happened in her family that really changed the course of her career. So welcome, Dr. Cohen, and thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is such an important discussion and in conversation, and I feel blessed to be able to share it with you and your and your listeners. So I think I'm so excited, so excited about this. So so tell us about your pain to passion story. What what got you involved in this company called RGCC and which will get into more details about it?

And how did it transform the healing journey for yourself and for your family? Yeah, so I have a really interesting background when it comes to this. As as you mentioned, I was a chiropractor, functional medicine, emotional healing for about 25 years and but I specialized in endocrine disorders. Cancer was was not part of my wheelhouse. It wasn't part of my knowledge base. And what ultimately happened was both my mom

From Chiropractic to Cancer Advocacy 2:04

and my sister were diagnosed with stage four cancers at the same time. And I was thrown into the cancer world the same way all of your listeners were. And I suddenly found myself in a very humbling position as a, you know, as a, you know, a doctor and as a practitioner to realize that I knew next to nothing about cancer. So all the knowledge that I had, I found myself at a loss and I did what everyone else does. And I went, you know, I went searching and researching and got my Google Ph.D. and in my search looking for, you know, different healing modalities and different resources.

I came across RGCC as a lab, but overall, what was happening is that because of my background and in doing the research was incredibly challenging even for me with my knowledge, I couldn't understand how patients without my background were sorting through this information. It was incredibly challenging. And slowly but surely, people started getting referred to me just to help them translate the information. And I found myself immersed in the world of, you know, of cancer patient advocacy. And I became the doctor in the family for those that didn't have one.

And again, part of what I ended up doing was finding labs that were able to to assist, not just giving information, but giving personalized information. Now, coming from the background that I come from an integrative and functional background, I understand that each each human being is unique and an individual. But what I ultimately found was that the care and the testing was very much one size fits all. And when I came across RGCC, it was really empowering for me to discover that there was a lab that understood that concept in that principle, and the entire foundation of the laboratory testing for RGCC is about personalization, partnership and creating personalized protocols for each individual patient.

So it helped to counter that one size fits all model that just doesn't work. And so so I came into the cancer world through the patient door, and I came to RGCC through the patient door. So I was a customer, if you will, before I actually worked for the company. But adding. You know, and you mentioned personalized testing is so important because we're all bio individuals. I mean, two women may have the same diagnosis of breast cancer, but they would have totally different responses to the type of treatment that they would need.

So for those for our listeners who are not familiar with RGCC can you just in lay terms just describe what this test does and why it's so beneficial? Absolutely. So RGCC bases its tests in what's called circulating tumor cells or CTCs. And in very simple terms, your your cancer sheds, its shed cells, kind of like your skin and your hair. So you have cancer cells that are circulating in your bloodstream. And RGCC is able to utilize a blood sample. It's called a liquid biopsy, and they're able to isolate those cells and extract them.

And then they're able to actually do individualized genetic testing so the CTCS can be used to to tell you about the volume of cancer in your body

How RGCC Liquid Biopsy Testing Works 6:06

so it can be used as a baseline and it also can help monitor, like as you're doing your treatment protocols. You come back and you look at those numbers to see is it rising or falling? Is it is the treatment options effective or not? So it gives it puts the power back into the hands of the patient because they understand where they are in their care. But as an extension of the CTC testing, we also do a very extensive genetic profile looking at the unique genetic expressions of your cancer cells, not the cancer cells.

Right. Because as you mentioned, you can have 100 women all have the same diagnosis. But when you put those cancer cells into a human body and a unique physiology within that human body, the cancer cells also have a unique expression. And this also explains why some cancer treatments will work for some people and not for others, because they're not actually the same. They have the same diagnosis, but they do not have the same cancer expression. Right. How the cancer cells are expressing within that unique, unique physiology.

So we have a comprehensive genetic expression profile that allows the practitioners to customize the protocols in addition to that personalized profile. RGCC Also tests more than 50 chemotherapeutic agents and more than 50 natural substances on those cancer cells to determine which are going to be the most effective with the cancer treatment. So it takes away that, you know, kind of shooting in the dark, doing what everyone else is doing and hoping for the best. So in my experience, for example, when I went through my second healing journey, right, you know, I'd seen positive results with our clients and using the RGCC.

So right away, you know, I went to that and it was such a useful tool because it helped me to monitor, as you mentioned, my progress. And sometimes there were little bumps in the road. Sometimes I went up a little bit and then it went back down, but it helped me to really target my protocol. So I knew that specific types of curcumin or Poly-MVA or sole cilium or Uncle Bell Pro or whatever products that they test at the time because they test 50 different natural extracts, I knew that those products were effectively targeting my cancer cells.

And so it really takes a lot of the stress and the worry away from, you know, is this going to work while, you know it's going to work because it's been tested in a laboratory for you. Yeah. And it really takes a lot of the guesswork out. One of the one of the hardest things about the cancer journey is the uncertainty, the fear and the uncertainty. And when you are utilizing treatment options that you have no idea whether they're going to work for you or not. It just adds to that uncertainty and that stress level.

And of course, the more stress, the harder it is for you to heal. So this again becomes something incredibly empowering for the patient and interestingly, not also for the provider. You know, a lot of people say, well, what are the patient needs? And then they say, well, what are the provider needs? And I'm like, They're actually the same thing. You want clarity, right? You want to be able to make informed decisions. And with that, you know, with the more traditional medical oncology approach, it's more of a one size fits all approach.

You really have no idea. So there's this is a this is a teaching tool. So this is a, you know, a Dr. Lauren teaching tool. You're not going to find it anywhere in any books. It just helps to explain it. But I called it a call it the 70/30 rule that with chemotherapeutic agents, 30% success rate with a chemotherapeutic agent is typically considered successful. But what that means is that if you have 100 patients that have the same diagnosis and use that same chemotherapeutic agent, it's going to be somewhat effective, not curative, but somewhat effective on 30 people and 70 people.

It's not going to be. And when you go into that treatment protocol, you don't know which group you're in. So if you happen to fall into the 30%, at least, you know, you're advancing somewhat in your in your care. But if you fall into the 70% now, what happens is you've now wasted time. You've wasted money, and oftentimes you've you've wasted health because a lot of these treatments are very harsh on the body and the same thing. Now, let's flip this into the natural world. For those in the audience that do more natural protocols, it's the same thing is that if you are doing natural approaches, but it is not a good match for you, you're wasting time.

You're wasting money. Now, they're usually not as harsh, so you may not be wasting as much, you know, having the harmful effects that chemotherapy will often have. But it's the same thing that we don't have that kind of time. We want to be moving in a forward direction. And and we want to have that sense of empower ment in our care. And the testing gives you that.

Personalized Treatment and Monitoring 11:46

It gives you the information so that you can make good in form decisions that are right for you. I love that. I love that. It's so important on a healing journey. All right. So the culture of our CC is partnership and personalization. Can you kind of talk a little bit on that? Yes. So this was actually one of the things that really drew me to see the personalization, of course, we've been speaking about. But another aspect of our JCC, which is unique in the laboratory space, is the partnership aspect in the internal culture is RJC is a family and as an extension so are the providers and the patients that are utilizing our services.

They become part of our community, part of our family. But we we partner with the patients and the providers all the way through the cancer journey. Right. Many labs are really like they're they're anonymous kind of cold institutional spaces. You know, you send in a sample and you get a report back. You never have any real contact with them. You have no real relationship there. And with our JCC, because we have an entire suite of testing, from screening to monitoring to protocol creation based, the baseline protocol creation, monitoring, and even something we call recurrence prevention programs when someone goes into remission is that you have that sense of of cancer just inside of the testing, you know, that you're going to get consistency.

So when you're doing your say your baseline and then you're doing your follow up testing, you know that you're getting the same the same science, the same methodology, the same quality of information. And it's it's an entire system or protocol. And when with most other labs, because most of the labs are doing one or two tests, the providers and of course, the patients are piecing their their care and their protocols together. And the science doesn't always match, so it becomes a lot more challenging.

So the partnership is knowing that that I have a trusted partner in my testing in that it's consistent, right? And it's a cohesive passive program. Again, gives me and my family a sense of, you know, a sense of security and a sense of confidence in in the, you know, the information that we're receiving. Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned recurrence prevention program that's so powerful because one of the biggest fears and questions that we receive from our community is I've been through so much with this cancer journey and I don't ever want it to come back, but I'm scared that it will.

What can I do? And so conventional medicine will tell them all, Go on your merry way. There's no evidence of disease. You are, quote unquote, cancer free. But what they are not telling them is that there are still possibly circulating tumor cells, cancer stem cells that are responsible for a recurrence. So can we speak on that a little bit? Absolutely. And this is such an important topic right here. Is is our uncle trace test is a CTC test. So it gives you a CTC count. Again, we talked about this a little earlier about the levels, but what it's doing is it's testing on a microscopic level.

Okay. So when cancer is going into remission, right. Or it gets small enough, the medical monitoring, as powerful as it may be during the height of the disease, it has its limitations. And one of its limitations is that it cannot detect the cancer. Right. The cancer will not show up on imaging when the cancer gets small enough. And in the medical world, in that tradition world, you if you can't see it, you can't treat it. So our uncle trace testing what it does is it puts the power back into the hands of the patients.

The patients can now continue to monitor the cancer in their body, even at a microscopic level. Now, what's so powerful about this test is that not only does it give you the numbers, so if if you were going into remission, you know, your numbers get small. We also are monitoring something we call stem this markers or stem stem cell like cells. And the information that we get from that those markers is the activity level of those cells. So if you're looking at CTC testing, you want to make sure that you understand what the cells are doing, not just the number, because what happens often, even in the CTC world is the number goes down, it's low, people say, okay, great, I'm in remission.

Even my CTC count is low. But they don't understand that if those cells are still active as low as they may be, they're coming back. Right. And we get that, you know, in the patient advocacy world, we get that question all the time. My cancer was gone. It came back. How did that happen? Right. So the the testing allows you to continue to monitor now when you do go into full remission, right. So your CTC count goes back to zero. You already know that your body has the propensity to create cancer.

And as you mentioned, there's that stress level of is it going to come back today? Will it be back tomorrow? How do I know? So with our testing, you are able to continue to monitor even when you go into remission so that you are able to see the reactivation rate that the presence of Ctcs, if they come back, and also the true activation of those cells

Recurrence Prevention and Test Frequency 18:18

at the earliest possible point so that you can intervene early. And as I mentioned before, from a medical perspective, if they can't see it, they can't treat it. They don't have anything to offer you in that space. But with our testing, if you have CTC is we can run that comprehensive panel. We can tell you exactly what the expression is. We can help you understand what treatment options are available for you in the natural realm so that you can get started with your treatment right away. Though, how often would someone have the RG CC test done?

It depends on which test. So initially you would do baseline testing and comprehensive panel. So that would be Bronco or ergonomics plus panel or one of our other economics panels that we do have. You would do the economics plus the larger panel once a year. Now, the reason that you would do it once a year is that the cancer is going to mutate. It's going to change over time so that you want to refresh that information and make sure that the treatment options that are are available to you are the most recent based on the current status of your cancer.

So you don't want to be using old information. So once a year you would refresh that, test the onco trace or monitoring testing. You would initially do it as a baseline and then every three months or so you would then redo that testing because you want to make sure that your protocol is working right. I call that the anchor trace test, the patient's yardstick, because this is this is where the power comes in and empowerment comes in because as a patient, you understand where you are, right? Are your ctcs going up or down?

Are they staying the same? Are they are the STEM missed markers staying active or are they are they turning into the off position? It gives you a way to measure and it's great. You know, people often go, well, what if it's not working? Well, that's the good news. Like rate, like if it's not working, we know the treatment plan that you're on isn't as effective as it needs to be and we can change course. Yeah. Right. You don't want to go too far. So every three months is the monitoring recommendation.

Once a year is the full panel recommendation. And then for those that have gone into remission, that's something that you would work with your provider to determine. But it may start with once every three months and then extend to once every six months and then once, you know, once every year and then you just monitor on a regular ongoing basis. Yeah. Exciting. So for those of you who may not know, so our JCC is also known as the Grease Test because the original research lab was, you know, wasn't started in Greece.

And our JCC stands for Research Genetic Cancer Center. So they are a research facility. And I understand that's like a 55,000 square foot building. And yes, it's an amazing I know I know Dr. Keneally who who's been to, you know, to to the the laboratory to check things out and see how wonderful the technology is. So so there's more and more other liquid biopsy labs that are kind of popping up that are claiming to do something as similar as RGCC. So what's what's the differentiation there with these other companies?

Yes. So liquid biopsy is really starting to come onto the scene and you're hearing more and more about it. But one of the things that I found in my research right before I worked for the company, this is part of the research I did is I compared what the technology and what the science was. And even with testing that has the same names like CTC testing that the equipment, the methodology, the testing methods. Right. Are not the same. The science is not the same. So as an example, most CTC tests that are out there today are using what's called positive selection.

So cancer cancer cells often have specific markers and what they're doing is they're looking for cells that only have that marker on it. So they're they're giving you a cell count to the exception of all of the

RGCC vs Other Liquid Biopsy Labs 22:58

some populations of cancer cells that do not contain that marker. So the numbers are very misleading. And if the treatment option that you utilize is successful at eliminating the cells with that marker, you're get your test results when you do follow up are going to come back is if you are clear when in fact you are not because again, it's only testing a small portion of the cells, not the entirety of the cancer cells. With RGCC, they use negatives selection so they don't look for a specific marker.

They they separate non-cancer cells from cancer cells. They count all of them. So cells with markers and those subpopulations without the markers so that you know that you are actually getting a true count. And that's just one example. So when when you are looking for labs or you're evaluating labs, it's really important to make sure you understand the science and the technology behind it. Another thing that often happens with these with these types of labs is we are using all cancer cells while others are using fragments.

Right. So we're able to do more testing and get more information from those whole cells than you can with fragments. Right. Because a whole cell is complete and intact fragments are from dead cells that have now separated right. So it's really important to understand that not only is it like, you know, not all cancer tests are alike and even tests that have the same name do not necessarily use the same science. So it's important to vet the lab and evaluate which testing is truly the right one for you.

That's excellent. Excellent. So, Dr. Cohen, we really appreciate RGCC being a sponsor for this event. You know, Breast Cancer Breakthroughs are so important for women on the healing journey, and we've seen so many changes in the cancer world in the last 10, 20 years. And I firmly believe that RGCC is a force for good in that change, because I know in my personal experience and with the many clients that we've had over the years who have relied on it, they've done they've done so well with the testing that you've offered and the suggestions, the results based on, you know, on their blood work.

So thank you so much for the the work that you do and RGCC so pass on are a thank you to Dr. P. I will. I call him that and how can people get more information and find out more about the benefits of using the Greece test or the RGCC. Test? Oh, absolutely. So we actually just opened up a a patient based website and the Website is myrgcc.com. And for those that are a little more science minded, you can also go to

Where to Learn More About RGCC 26:18

rgcc-international.com So you know it gives you two different avenues to to go down in terms of you know, looking for the information there are contact forms on on the Websites that if you wish to ask additional questions, if you're looking to find an RGCC provider who can help you access the RGCC testing, just fill out those contact forms and they will be sent to my team and we will definitely get back to you with whatever information you need. Well, thank you again so much for all the work that you do.

And I really appreciate you taking the time and the support of this summit. So thank you very much. Oh, and one last thing. I wanted to let everyone know that we do have a been an e-book that I put together based on my experiences for and I called it Your Guide to Personalize Cancer Testing How to Access the Future of Cancer Care. Today and again, it's going to help you to vet the different labs, to figure out what you what the testing is about and what's going to work best for you. And you can access that with myrgcc.com/drtalks And I'm sure we'll have that in the show notes as well.

So they'll have that opportunity. But thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, that'll be a great tool for them. All right. So thank you so much. And I look forward to our next conversation. Wonderful. Thank you again.