Dear Rene and Edward
Your book has greatly deepened my knowledge on immunotherapy, I have been dealing with Stage 4 ovarian cancer since 2016and been looking at the same approach you have taken, When I read your book I realized at that point Nesselhut was not doing PD-1 inhibitors with the DC vaccination or have I missed this point? I would also like to know how many DC vaccinations had you taken and is there any tests we can possibly do to determine if we are responding to DC. I have been taking the vaccines since Dec and not sure if they are able to give me a clear answer on this point.
I am also looking into caris molecular testing as well since I did not respond to chemo and wondering if you recommend this test?
Thanks in advance
Maya
Hi Maya,
Chapter 16 has our thoughts about immunotherapy treatment strategies available today. Pay close attention to the combination strategies. A lecture I gave emphasizes the importance of combination immunotherapy -- http://www.curingcancerbook.com/blog/videos
Caris testing - When I did the Caris testing 9 years ago, the genes analysed led to suggestions of chemotherapy or targeted therapy drugs. I feel that with today's availability of immunotherapy treatments and clinical trials, that would be my preferred treatment direction, rather than chemotherapy or targeted therapy drugs. But if you are curious whether there are specific drugs that may be able to target your cancer, molecular testing could be something to do provided you have enough tumor sample.
DC vaccine - it's hard to know if it's "working". I had routine scans to detect tumor growth. Some cancers may have blood markers that can be detected.
I had DC vaccines many many times. I think I had 2-3 leukopheresis procedures to gather enough DC cells for all of the DC vaccines I had over 2 years.
PD1 with DC - I don't know if Dr. Nesselhut treats with PD1. When I was going to Dr. Nesselhut, PD1 was not available to me in the US nor in Germany. I do not know the status of PD1 availability in Germany today. I would think there are PD1 clinical trials in Germany or perhaps PD1 can be gotten off-label, as that's the case in the US now.
Wishing you the very best.
Contact info:
Dr. Littrup: http://www.cureasps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1296
Dr. Aoun: http://www.cureasps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=835