$PVCT.OB Blog Reader Question

I read an old interview (2010) with Craig Dees where he explained the novelty of their
approach in targeting the tumor as opposed to just using a systemic agent that is
(hopefully) more active on the tumor than on the healthy cells. What I was not clear on
is: is this a new philosophic approach, or is it expressed in chemistry? Do they have
some chemical delivery system that is being used to deliver Rose Bengal to the
tumors? Is the novelty of their approach that they are looking for something to target
the tumors directly as opposed to the approach used up to now?

Craig frames Provectus' approach to treating cancer in the following way: the harder you punch the immune system, the greater the response. He references a lecture by a veterinary virologist Carl Olson who showed a picture of a cow with a basketball-sized papilloma hanging from its stomach. The professor said (paraphrasing): "Cut that off aseptically and cleanly, and it will grow back every time. Tear it off, make it bleed, kick dirt into the wound, and it will never come back." Shock the heck out of the immune system with tissue destruction (wake it up), break tolerance and encourage a large-scale release of tumor antigens into the system so they can be seen in context.

Dirt, in the story above, like a vaccine adjuvant, riles up the immune system causing it to attack. Much of what Provectus is doing is treating cancer like an infectious disease, and recruiting immune system help. There's another explanation, besides "PV-10 did not work," for non- or poorly responsive injected lesions and bystander lesions that responded poorly or did not respond at all. PV-10's mechanism of immune response is an autophagy-induced, systemwide antitumor one.

Sufficiently inject the lesion (or tumor); induce autophagy and shrink or eliminate the lesion; and, induce the immune system, via the antigens released from successfully treating the injected lesion(s), to successfully treat bystander lesions and remote cancerous locations. In other words, effectively punch the target lesion enough so the immune system can more effectively punch cancer around the patient's body enough. Proper action. Beneficial reaction.

Rather than a new philosophic approach, Craig views Provectus' work as the creation of a new paradigm. See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. "Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of such conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science."

People have tried the intra-tumoral route with little or no success. Some approached getting the immune system to act in the manner described above by Dr. Olson. Still others discovered tumor-killing autophagy induced specific, system-wide, antitumor immunity.

Why did others fail to do it well? In Provectus' view, other drugs killed cancers through toxicity rather than tumor tissue specificity, and thus had poor efficacy and problematic side effects. The drugs killed normal tissue, leaked out and systemically poisoned patients, preventing the proper and effective stimulation of the immune system.

PV-10 kills by autophagy and is very much focused only on diseased tissue. According to the company, stimulation of help by the host's anti-tumor defenses appears to be mediated by T-cells and direct actions on antigen-presenting cells. Management thus believes the approach to treating cancer with PV-10 is a new paradigm: Treat cancer like it is an infectious disease. Of course, don't use systemic poisons. Ultimately, however, components of Provectus's approach include pieces of other knowledge assembled to form a whole new approach: A therapy that functions.