Health Explorers: Dr. Nagourney

Dr. Robert Nagourney and a way to test your own cancer cells to see what will be the most effective treatment for your own particular type of cancer. Dr. Nagourney discusses his revolutionary approach to determining what type of chemotherapy or other therapy would be most appropriate for a patient's cancer. Called an Ex-Vivo Apoptic laboratory assay, this test is conducted in test tubes on your own cancer cells.

In this test, your tumor is subjected to 60+ different drugs to see which, if any, cause the cancer cells to die - the idea being that ordinary cancer cells actually live forever and this immortality, rather than the fast growth of the cancer cells, is the reason cancer is so deadly.

By testing for cell death in the laboratory Dr. Nagourney is able to see which drug works on your specific cells, so that you have a kind of designer chemo approach to treatment. Interesting stuff, even for me who hates chemo after seeing its affect on my family, and he is getting very interesting results. For more info see Rational Therapeutics

After listening, you can find more information on Cancer alternatives at our Cancer Information page.

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