30 April 2021: Letter to President Biden

30 April 2021

Dear President Biden,

Congratulations on your proposal to "end cancer as we know it" and your efforts to increase funding for basic research.

What constitutes a cure for cancer, or ending cancer as we know it? I have developed a strategic plan with the goal of reducing annual US cancer deaths from 600,000 currently to 100,000 by 2030, see http://www.natpernick.com/StrategicPlanCuringCancer.html. To be successful, we need to improve and implement this or a similar strategic plan, which identifies research, clinical and prevention activities that need to be taken and coordinated.

Ending cancer is not analogous to landing on the moon. We are not searching solely for a "silver bullet" or other technological innovation. Instead, we need to change our approach to cancer treatment and focus on (a) attacking tumor networks, not mutations; (b) altering multiple aspects of the tumor microenvironment; (c) identifying, targeting and monitoring systemic tumor networks relating to chronic inflammation, immune system dysfunction and other tumor nurturing effects, and (d) strengthening our cancer prevention programs through promotion of the American Code Against Cancer, see http://www.natpernick.com/AmericanCodeAgainstCancer.html or similar efforts.

We need combinations of combinations of treatment and clinical trials for almost all cancer patients, strategies that led to cures for childhood leukemia, testicular cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma.

I am currently pursuing these efforts, and although I am in contact with pathologists worldwide through my website, PathologyOutlines.com, I am only an individual pathologist. It would be useful to have a partner in the federal government who could identify collaborators in federal agencies or elsewhere to more fully develop and implement this strategic plan.

Please review and advise.

29 April 2021 - Antibodies against Cancer

Question: What's your opinion on the feasibility of adapting the mRNA technology that was used to develop the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to treat various cancers?

Answer: Here is an article - https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/can-mrna-vaccines-like-those-used-for-covid-19-be-used-in-cancer-care.h00-159457689.html.

The idea is that a cancer vaccine can generate antibodies to attack the tumor. When I was a medical student at the University of Michigan in 1980, we saw a patient with melanoma who was cured, at least at that time, with that approach. But the problem was getting it to work on a consistent basis - his case appeared to be a rare success. Today, we are more technically savvy, and we may have better results.

These points are important:

1. There will be no silver bullet. No one treatment option will likely cure a large percentage of patients with even a specific type of cancer. We will need combinations of treatments to attack different parts of the tumor. This is how we cured childhood leukemia, testicular cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma.

2. For adult tumors, unless the tumor is small, we will also need to monitor and treat the supporting networks that nurture the tumor and will create additional tumors over time [this is my proposal - it is not generally accepted].

3. We should also focus on changing our behavior, which could prevent 30-50% of all cancer related deaths, see http://www.natpernick.com/AmericanCodeAgainstCancer.html

27 April 2021: Let's Cure Cancer Together

Let's Cure Cancer Together.

It’s time to implement a strategic plan to cure cancer.

The era of modern cancer treatment began in 1948 when Dr. Sidney Farber, a Boston pathologist, published a landmark study reporting that chemotherapy could induce temporary remissions in childhood leukemia (Farber 1948, free full text-PDF download). Remarkably, this study was met not with hope and acclaim, but with skepticism and outrage (Miller 2006).

Rest of essay:

Let's cure cancer together (link), Blog, PDF.

 

11 April 2021 - How Cancer Kills - updated

 I have updated "How Cancer Kills" based on comments by Dr. Phillip A. Phillip, Wayne State University:

HTML: http://natpernick.com/CuringCancerPart9.html

BLOG: https://natpernickshealthblog.wordpress.com/2021/03/22/curing-cancer-blog-part-9-how-cancer-kills/

PDF: http://natpernick.com/CuringCancerPart9.pdf

My theory is that cancer deaths are preventable, at least for the short term, for many patients who die quickly of cancer. Their deaths are due to cancer's marked disruption of physiologic systems necessary for life. Sophisticated medical treatment can counter this disruption and the patients can live much longer. This is analogous to diabetic ketoacidosis, which often kills patients with new onset diabetes unless they receive sophisticated treatment to reverse the marked disruption of physiologic systems associated with this disease.