Advanced Cancer Testing: Genomic, Proteomic, and Functional Tests

•Not wasting time or money on treatments that won't be effective, leaving resources available for treatments that are.

•Many chemotherapeutic treatments are very hard on the body. If you are going to pay that high a physical price, you want to know the "price" is worth it.

•Being armed with personalized information about what treatment options are right for you, gives you the peace of mind knowing you are not guessing and hoping for the best, but making sound decisions with actionable information. With the Onconomics Plus test you get information about your circulating tumor cells, you get genetic and physiological expressions such as growth factors, resistance factors, angiogenesis factors, cell cycle regulation, metastasis, drug metabolism and targets, and even radiotherapy and hyperthermia sensitivity. In addition, you get chemo sensitivity testing on 117 chemotherapeutic agents and targeted therapies, along with more than 53 natural substances, so that when you are making choices about care options, you know exactly which chemotherapy agents and natural substances are going to work for you. The Onconomics Plus test results consist of 24 pages, this is the test that provides all the information you need to determine what is effective therapy for whatever cancer that is tested. And so the therapeutic options that one will obtain from this test covers a broad number of different therapeutic approaches. In order to receive RGCC testing, it is essential that you get connected with an RGCC practitioner. RGCC only works with RGCC registered practitioners. So even if you have a naturopath or primary care physician, they can't just order a test unless they are registered RGCC practitioners. Chad Magnussen, one of the patients in the Prostate Cancer Lab community, got tests from RGCC. He described his experience with RGCC, and RGCC used his test report to illustrate their services, and answer questions such as: Q: How do you position RGCC's services? A: RGCC is more than a lab. RGCC has an entire testing system that provides personalized information that guides you through the entire cancer journey. The system contains tests for baselines, cancer cell activity and prognosis, genetic and physiological expressions creating individualized profiles used to create customized treatment protocols for each patient, chemosensitivity testing of chemotherapeutic agents and natural substances, immune status, and monitoring at the microscopic level during treatment for protocol efficacy and early detection of recurrence when traditional medical monitoring is not sensitive enough to detect. Although there are other labs that do individual pieces of what we do, we are the only lab that provides this testing in a comprehensive and cohesive system. Q: Do you primarily work with blood as input? A: RGCC specializes in liquid biopsy using blood samples that can be collected at any time during the cancer journey. We can also use fresh tissue samples, but they must be fresh, collected at the time of the excision or biopsy, not paraffin embedded. And of course, this is often a one-time option since surgery is not routinely done every 3 months or so to gather a new sample, and any material left over is embedded in paraffin which preserves the tissue but not the CTCs. In addition, biopsy/excision samples are like a time capsule. Cancer cells mutate over time, especially after treatment is done. Using a tissue sample collected 6 months or more prior, no longer matches the cancer cells currently being expressed in the patient's body. Using fresh blood samples keeps the information current. The information and opinions expressed on this website or platform, or during discussions and presentations (both verbal and written) are not intended as health care recommendations or medical advice by Prostate Cancer Lab, its principals, presenters, participants, or representatives for any medical treatment, product, or course of action. You should always consult a doctor about your specific situation before pursuing any health care program, treatment, product or other course of action that might affect your health. Meeting Notes The information and opinions expressed on this website or platform, or during discussions and presentations (both verbal and written) are not intended as health care recommendations or medical advice by Prostate Cancer Lab, its principals, presenters, participants, or representatives for any medical treatment, product, or course of action. You should always consult a doctor about your specific situation before pursuing any health care program, treatment, product or other course of action that might affect your health. Discussion Outline 1.Disclaimers. (0:00) 2.Introduction to RGCC. (2:41) 3.Personalization and partnership in cancer care. (8:53) 4.Therapeutic options for prostate cancer. (17:11) 5.Hormone-driven cancer. (24:15) 6.How to order a test. (33:18) 7.The remission and recurrence prevention program. (39:52) 8.Which tests do you use for RGCC testing? (43:12) 9.Access and interpretation of the test. (50:17) 10.The missing information about gene expression. (54:46) SUMMARY KEYWORDS test, cancer, gcc, patient, agents, work, resistance, genes, practitioner, lab, ctc, question, natural substances, treatment, chad, information, cells, ngs, cancer cells, determine SPEAKERS Dr. Lauren Cohen (40%), Dr. Miven Donato (40%), Brad Power (7%), Chad Magnussen (6%), Jonathan Starr (4%), Panagiotis Apostolou (4%), Robert Gurmankin (<1%) Meeting Notes Brad Power 0:03 This is the Prostate Cancer Lab/Cancer Patient Lab. We're pleased to have representatives from RGCC with us who are a testing and diagnostic service, and we'll be learning about the services they can offer to patients. Chad, can you please do a quick introduction of RGCC and the background for why we're having our session today? Chad Magnussen 1:18 The reason I started with RGCC is because I’m seeing a naturopath functional doctor, and I was talking to him about the book How to Starve Cancer and how I was interested in blocking certain pathways. And he said to me that the best way to do that would be to get an RGCC report and actually have some actionable ways to block certain pathways. You may be throwing some “ supplements out, something that really isn't doing you any benefit. So his suggestion was to get this report. And so we did that, and I have developed a supplement protocol from this report that I have quite a bit of confidence in. The other part is I'd already completed chemotherapy when I got this report, but there's some interesting information that I think they'll touch on that would be very helpful to someone newly diagnosed. So that's how I started. And basically we'll just turn it over to I believe Lauren to present. Dr. Lauren Cohen 2:41 We just want to say that we are very excited to be here. And Chad, thank you so much for introducing us to this community. This is an amazing patient-oriented community. And what you're going to find is RGCC is very patient focused, and a very different experience with a lab than you may have had before. Something we specialize in is helping patients find personalized information so that they can make informed personalized decisions about their cancer. This presentation has a lot of ground to cover. The overview itself could normally take anywhere between, say 30 to 45 minutes, but we're going to do a very brief overview because we're doing something very special today, which is taking one of our tests, our most comprehensive tests, the Onconomics Plus test, and we're going to do an interpretation demonstration. So you can see how the information that you get on your test can be interpreted and utilized to make a very personalized protocol for you as an individual person. And then of course, we're going to leave time for Q & A. I'm Dr. Lauren Cohen. I am the managing director of RGCC International which is the US-based branch of RGCC International. We have Dr. Miven Donato, who is an active practicing clinician, he's also an RGCC-accredited clinician, and he is also one of the members of our clinical support and training team. And he is going to be doing our interpretation portion of the presentation today. And lastly, we have Panagiotis Apostolou. He's our lab manager in Greece, and he is also a molecular biologist. He won't be presenting today, but he is here so that he can answer as many questions as can be answered, because we do know that you are a community of citizen scientists, and we want to make sure that we have enough staff here to be able to answer any questions that may arise. Our founder Dr. Ioannis Papasotiriou has truly revolutionized the cancer care paradigm. That is his vision. And he is putting something very unique and very special together. He's using CTC testing with a culture of partnership and personalization, which is taking the cancer care paradigm, which is very impersonal, and turning it into something very personalized for each individual patient. CTC testing for circulating tumor cells, are whole cancer cells that are floating in your system. And utilizing the CTC testing, as opposed to biopsy is very impactful. It's a non-invasive procedure. You are able to get the information that you need with a simple blood draw. With a biopsy, it's of course, a surgical procedure, it's much more involved. But it also does not provide information in real time, where CTC testing allows you to have information in real time, at all times. When you do a biopsy, and they preserve the tissue, if they utilize that same tissue at a later point in time during your care, you're using old information. Cancer cells mutate, your physiology is changing, and the expression of the cancer within your body is changing. So utilizing blood draw with CTC testing allows you to stay current with the information of how the cancer is expressed in your body at any given point in time. And also, it's done on a microscopic level, so we are not working with medical monitoring that isn't sensitive enough to pick up small quantities of cancer. I call that flying under the radar. So with this testing, when your cancer gets small enough, medical monitoring can't see it. And unfortunately, if the medical profession can't see it, they can't treat it. So when your cancer recedes to a certain degree, they often will say your cancer is gone. But it's not necessarily gone. It's still there on a microscopic level, it just can't be seen. But with RGCC testing, once you get below that radar limit, and it can no longer be seen on medical monitoring, you can continue to monitor. So this is a very powerful tool for you to be able to know exactly where you are at any given point in time. So this also answers that question that you often hear in the cancer world for those that were successful with their original treatment: My cancer was gone, but it came back. How did that happen? It happened because cancer cells were still in circulation at a microscopic level, but no one was monitoring them. And unfortunately, it takes for the cancer to grow large enough to be seen again before they're able to intervene. So CTC testing is a very powerful tool and a very convenient tool. The current paradigm in the cancer care world is a one-size-fits-all model. You have a specific cancer type and everybody gets the same treatment. And of late, you're hearing a lot about personalized medicine. But if you look at the testing that's being done, it's a bit of a misnomer because the personalization is happening to the cancer. It is not not happening in a way that is personalized to the unique expression of the cancer cells within your unique physiology. RGCC shines in the personalization. So the information you get is very detailed and very specific to you. What makes RGCC so unique as a lab is the personalization and partnership. Let's start with partnership. RGCC is able to partner with you throughout your cancer journey. With most testing, each lab does an individual test or individual piece, but there is no consistency or cohesiveness through the program. So you go to different labs, with different science, with different measures and protocols. But with RGCC, once you're diagnosed and you enter into the RGCC universe, we stay with you all the way through the cancer journey. We help you establish a baseline. We have testing for personalized treatment options. We're able to monitor your progress. And we're also able to monitor once you go into remission in what we call a recurrence prevention program. So that you can be proactive. As soon as that cancer is active again, you will know, and you'll be able to intervene at a much earlier stage. I call this the three C's. The partnership aspect of it provides clarity, consistency and cohesiveness. So with clarity, you get very detailed, personalized information that you can take action on, so if the information is very clear. Consistency. By staying with the same lab doing the testing, you have a consistency across the science. Now one of the things that you may or may not know is that different labs use different science even for the same test. So if you do a CTC test with another lab, they may be using different science. So you're not comparing apples to apples. So you want to make sure that you have that consistency across each test to make sure that the information is consistent for you. And also having a cohesive program by staying with a lab that is able to support you all the way through your journey, you and your practitioner can put together a clear path for your care. Personalization is power, providing comprehensive, personalized and actionable information to make informed decisions. One of the things that you don't have is time to waste on treatment options that don't work for you. So we want to make sure that you have the information that you need, so that you can make very strategic decisions with specific information that will be appropriate for you. So again, moving away from the one size fits all model into a very personalized approach. Establishing a baseline. One of our premier tests is an Oncotrace test. This is going to give you the cancer volume, the activity level of those cancer cells, and it's going to help you measure the effectiveness of your treatment. And it's also going to help you know when your treatment is done. Now, from a patient advocacy standpoint, this test is your most important test. Why? Because this is your yardstick as a patient. You want to know where you are in your treatment at any given point in time. Is it working? Is it not? So that you can make good decisions and make changes in your protocols as soon as you can if you need to. Dr. Lauren Cohen 13:19 This is what you may have called the Greek test. It is our most comprehensive panel. It gives you amazing personalized information on exactly what is happening within your cancer, and the expression of that cancer within your body. We have three different panels. But our most comprehensive is our Onconomics Plus and that is the test that Chad did and it's the test that we're going to be doing some interpretation with today. With our comprehensive personalized information from our Onconomics Plus test, you get information about your circulating tumor cells, you get genetic and physiological expressions such as growth factors, resistance factors, angiogenesis factors, cell cycle regulation, metastasis, drug metabolism and targets, and even radiotherapy and hyperthermia sensitivity, so you know if heat therapeutic options are right for you. In addition, we do chemo sensitivity testing on 117 chemotherapeutic agents and targeted therapies, along with more than 53 natural substances, so that when you are making choices about care options, you know exactly