Conditions

The immune system is further compromised by common cancer treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy. Both of these treatments harm bone marrow, where blood cells needed to fight cancer cells are created. The combination of a weakened (or entirely shut off) immune system, with low blood cell counts, is lethal. 

The immune system is composed of specific cells, tissue, and organs that function collaboratively to protect the body from unwelcome invaders.

The lymphatic system makes up a vital part of the immune system. This system consists of thin tubes (known as lymph vessels) and oval-shaped tissue, called lymph nodes. The lymph vessels carry a fluid (called lymph), which serves as a cell waste collecting system. These vessels also help distribute immune cells throughout the body. Lymph nodes are clumps of tissue that contain white blood cells that filter the fluid traveling throughout the vessels – capturing and eliminating bacteria, viruses, and any other unwelcome health hazards, including cancer cells. The lymphatic system is also made up of the thymus gland, spleen, tonsils, and adenoids – which all serve the immune system.

The immune system is composed of an “innate” and an “acquired” system. The “innate” system is the body’s first line of defense when it detects an invader. This system utilizes a host of cells, including, neutrophils, macrophages, mast, basophils, dendritic, and natural killer cells (which are particularly adept at fighting precancerous or cancer cells) to attack viruses, bacteria, infection and any other type of enemy it identifies.

The “acquired” system is a more refined system, which uses the body’s T-cells and B-Cells to deliver targeted antibodies intended to neutralize the attacker – or block it from entering the body entirely. This system launches a gamut of combinations to fully annihilate the attacker. Once the acquired system determines the precise code needed to eradicate the intruder, it recalls the combination so that if the body is invaded by the same attacker again it can rapidly deploy the exact defense needed.

Our Approach to Cancer

Seraph Medical provides our patients with science-based cancer therapies that are geared towards improving the outcomes of traditional cancer treatments, by (in part) helping to significantly strengthen our patient’s own disease-fighting systems.

Our medical team approaches each patient’s cancer in a manner that is as unique as the patient. Together we create customized and comprehensive cancer treatment plans that focus on eradicating the disease, by going above and beyond chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

When our patients with cancer are at a clinical-stage known to be resistant to conventional anti-cancer treatments or are at risk of tumor recurrence following conventional anti-cancer modalities, the Seraph Medical team uses innovative modalities to treat cancer, with a focus on targeted and cell-mediated immunotherapy, including vaccines, oncolytic viruses and especially cancer killer cells (lymphocytes & macrophages), stem cells-based anti-cancer modalities and other personalized tumor-targeted approaches.

Many patients turn to Seraph Medical after exhausting traditional approaches, which fail to keep cancer in remission. Most of our patients with cancer have previously undergone surgery, along with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.  Once the tumor is no longer visible, patients with cancer treated with these traditional modalities have been returned to their “normal” life without further treatment recommendations. In contrast, Seraph Medical patients with cancer are provided ongoing treatments that help their own disease-fighting systems function optimally, as well as continuous monitoring to ensure that treatments are altered the moment any abnormalities are detected.

Continuous Surveillance & Cancer Detection

Every cancer starts with one abnormal cell. When this single-cell escapes the surveillance of the immune system, continuous division results in the progression of the disease. When cancer reaches one million cells the cancer lesion is only the size of a head of a pin and is undetectable with current technology. As a result, patients in so-called “remission,” might actually have small lesions in various locations throughout their body – which can later turn into detectable tumors.

In our experience, our patient’s best chance – sometimes the only chance – is to be treated at the stage of minimal residual disease.

Minimal Residual Cancer Treatment

During the minimal residual stage of the disease, the Seraph Medical team often treats patients with cancer with a two-step approach. This includes delivering customized treatments designed to eliminate as many cancer cells as possible, with the goal of getting cancer down to the stage of minimal residual disease, as well as applying innovative anti-cancer modalities focusing on immunotherapy – in an attempt to control residual malignant cells, even if complete elimination cannot be accomplished.

By keeping the number of malignant cells fixed, and preventing or minimizing tumor progression, patients may live long and even remain asymptomatic. In most cases, the danger is not from the number of tumor cells present, but rather from tumor progression that is anticipated in the future when treatments fail.

Our Two-Step Approach 

Step One:

For patients who have undergone, or are undergoing chemotherapy, the Seraph Medical team conducts chemo-sensitivity testing to help determine the best regimen or combination of chemotherapy. This testing is done to ensure that the treatment given will not be rendered ineffective because the cancer cells have become chemo-resistant. This testing is best suited for patients with Stage III cancer or higher because at this stage in the disease circulating tumor cells (CTC) and cancer stem cells (CSC) can be easily harvested from peripheral blood.

Once the cancer cells are isolated and meticulously studied, the Seraph Medical team creates a fully personalized treatment plan that helps minimize the number of chemotherapy-resistant malignant cells and utilizes other treatment methods designed to eliminate and/or control the rate of progression of residual malignant cells – including fully resistant cancer stem cells that may be responsible for tumor recurrence in patients considered “cured” because of lack of visible residual disease.

Step Two:

Once all possible approaches for minimizing the tumor burden are exhausted, the Seraph Medical team deploys innovative anti-cancer treatment protocols and immunotherapy to help the patient’s own immune system fight cancer.

Immunotherapy activates the patient’s own immune system cells to fight malignant cells, while foreign immune system cells (allogeneic lymphocytes) are added to help aid in the destruction of cancer.

For activation of the patient’s own immune system, and for treatment of residual disease, the Seraph Medical team employs several different modalities. These include:

• application of personalized innovative, yet experimental, modalities involving combinatorial anti-cancer therapy  – which consist of cycling metronomic treatment, based on the use of well-tolerated combinations of methods for immune regulation, as well as low-dose anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, pro-apoptotic and anti-angiogenic agents, aiming to facilitate induction of an immune response against cancer – which is normally suppressed by cells of the immune system called regulatory T cells and by inhibitory factors, such as prostaglandin E2.

• metronomic treatment designed to induce apoptosis (natural cell death –  that is typically inactivated in rapidly replicating cancer cells) and to block the blood vessels that are essential to nourish the rapidly growing cancer cells. This two-pronged treatment approach is designed to allow the immune system to launch an assault on the tumors, as well as to facilitate suppression and induction of cell death of rapidly growing cancer cells.

• other selective personalized anti-cancer modalities, focusing on autologous [if frozen tumor cells are available] or allogeneic tumor cell vaccines prepared from genetically compatible tumor cell lines that closely mimics the patient’s own tumor cells. When using tumor lysate, tumor antigens are loaded on the patient’s own dendritic cells (DC) to act as antigen-presenting cells. DCs derived from a half-matched family member are also utilized to maximize the stimulation of the patient’s own immune system cells against tumor antigens presented properly by the haplotype identical to the patient, with the mismatched haplotype serving as a strong stimulator of T cell activation.  Sometimes the tumor itself can serve as a vaccine if we can inject inside the tumor mass agents that invite an attack against the malignant tissue; in other words, using the tumor itself or one of the visible metastases as an internal vaccine.

• various additional approaches to activate the patient’s own immune system against cancer, including interleukin 2 (IL-2) and interferon that activate T cells and natural killer cells.

• immune system activation may also be attempted by using bacterial toxins (Coley’s toxin), administered systemically or directly into the visible tumor or metastatic lesion. In-situ auto vaccination against solid cancers with intratumoral inoculation of Coley’s toxin or another new agent may also be employed to stimulate the patient’s own immune system against cancer antigens, including Hilton (Poly-ICLC). These treatments stimulate bacterial and viral infections that stimulate the immune system by inducing “danger signals” and therefore may be associated with fever and shaking chills like following real infections, accompanied by an effective attack against cancer cells. Candidates for experimental treatment with Coley’s toxin or Hilton or other immune-stimulating agents such as allogeneic dendritic cells include unresectable melanomas that are accessible to intratumoral injections, or any other malignant disease with skin metastases or any visible malignant lesion safely accessible to intratumoral injections.

• in parallel with the above, the Seraph Medical team highly recommends the clinical application of one or more of the aforementioned protocols, based on the use of intentionally mismatched killer cells (IMAK), allogeneic (foreign) lymphocytes activated in the laboratory with interleukin 2 (IL-2). This indiscriminate modality works for any type of cancer and is administered in the early stages of treating our patients with cancer, while our team simultaneously works on creating a personalized treatment.

• continuous activation of allogeneic killer cells in the patient’s body by the administration of IL-2 for 5 days, while allogeneic lymphocytes circulate, can be added to kill cancer cells faster and more effectively. Killer cells can be targeted against residual malignant cells with monoclonal or bispecific antibodies against tumor-associated antigens that can be pre-determined by analysis of paraffin blocks from previous biopsies or surgical samples.

• antibody guided killer cells are also used to increase efficacy and selectivity of anti-cancer effects mediated by intentionally mismatched killer cells that then react against cancer cells by a mechanism resembling allograft rejection. The killing of cancer cells by mismatched immune system cells has been shown to be effective in killing chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells because rejection of any mismatched tissue is a very consistent property of the immune system.

• systemic or intratumoral administration of harmless cancer-seeking poultry viruses that can penetrate into the malignant cells and destroy them. These foreign viruses can penetrate into the malignant cells and can also activate the patient’s immune system against cancer.

The Seraph Medical team always recommends using as many non-cross resistant anti-cancer procedures as possible, each operating against a different target on resistant cancer cells. This approach is designed to attack cancer cells that have inevitably become resistant against a particular type of treatment, to be besieged with different anticancer mechanisms that the cells have not become resistant to yet.

Patients who seek the help of the Seraph Medical team – when malignant cells are no longer responsive to available anti-cancer modalities, and there is no real option for cure with any of the conventional anti-cancer agents – have the option to participate in a personalized Seraph Research Institute study to potentially extend life expectancy.

Seraph Medical patients with cancer are not placed in a Seraph Research Institute trial to study a new treatment. Instead, the scientists and medical team study the patient’s condition to identify any potential treatment – or treatments – that will give them the best chance to live. Patients are not asked to abandon any other form of medical care, or ongoing treatment if it is helping. Our goal is to provide additional options that help provide the best possible outcomes for our patients with cancer. That’s why Seraph Medical always seeks to collaborate with the patient’s existing team of doctors and oncologists. Seraph Medical doctors and Seraph Research Institute scientists work day and night with the same goal: saving a life.

Seraph Medical closely adheres to the latest government regulations in order to comply with local and state guidelines that regulate medical providers in the United States of America. For example, the Right To Try Act, which was signed in May 2018, provides terminally ill patients with access to new treatments that are still undergoing FDA trials but could prove to extend life expectancy and quality of life for cancer patients.

If you have been diagnosed with cancer and would like to meet with our medical and scientific team, please contact us to schedule a consultation.