MTM - Interview with Mike Catto - Beta Glucan, the Miracle Cancer Cure

A father’s death from pancreatic cancer sparks a decades-long hunt for a better answer, and it leads to one surprising place: the cell walls of baker’s yeast. We’re joined by Mike Catto, a researcher and biotech founder, to unpack beta-glucan and why the specific 1-3/1-6 linkage he works with matters for immune modulation and cancer immunotherapy.

We walk through Mike’s path from early biopolymer work to acquiring failed injectable beta-glucan patents, rebuilding the process, and pushing through an expensive FDA clinical-trial journey. He shares why major cancer centres tested this approach, how a therapy can be labelled “fast-tracked” yet still stay out of patients’ hands, and what he believes keeps an injectable option stuck in limbo.

Then we slow down and get practical. Mike explains the proposed mechanism of action: priming innate immunity, including NK cells, so the immune system can better recognise and attack tumour targets. We also discuss oral versus injectable beta-glucan, daily immune support dosing, the idea of trained immunity, and the add-on protocol he uses for late-stage cancer cases, including ivermectin, fenbendazole, vitamin E, curcumin, and CBD oil tincture depending on the situation. Finally, we cover where he tells people to get the 1-3/1-6 beta-glucan product and what to avoid when shopping.

If this conversation raises new questions for you about cancer treatment, immune support supplements, and the realities of drug approval, share it with someone who needs hope and options, then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I'm going to ask him to introduce himself and just tell us a little bit about himself. And then I've got some questions that I want to ask him to share with my listening audience. So, Mike Cato, welcome to More Than Medicine.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Well, thank you, Dr. Jackson. It's a real pleasure for me to be with you, and it was a pleasure for me to be with you this weekend and for us to have a time to share many things together.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Tell my folks about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

All right. Well, um, again, I'm Mike Cato. I was born and raised up in Boston, Massachusetts, and I only say that because it's going to come into play in a little while. Um Highway 495 decided they wanted to take our house up there. And uh so we uh relocated to South Carolina because my dad served at Camp Croft here in Spartanburg, met my mother, and they married. And uh once once they took our house, uh we moved back down here to South Carolina. Here in South Carolina, um uh I went to Clemston University

A Personal Loss Fuels A Mission

SPEAKER_03 1:58

and uh I studied biological sciences. I was there on an engineering degree, so uh I had the mechanical engineering as well as biological science background. Um in 1998, uh my father came down with pancreatic cancer and uh and he suffered terribly, and they tried everything to cure his cancer, and they tried every new message that were out there, but nothing worked at all, and he died. And I and at that time I decided, you know, there must be a way to cure cancer. So I started a company. I gathered a couple of my friends, and we started a company called Biopolymer Engineering, and uh we located in Minneapolis, St. Paul. And uh through this company we were wanting to develop different uh pharmaceutical uh items, and in particular, we were looking at chitin and chitazan, which many of you know what that is, and uh we also were looking at others like like beta-glucans. Well, I was building a factory down in El Salvador to extract the chitin molecule from Langostino that was a large biomass off of the coast of El Salvador, and we had a patented process for extracting that molecule and converting it to kitazan. And while doing that, SmithKline Glaxo in England had contacted me, and they had a waste stream at their plant in England, and they thought there was chitin in that, so they asked me to come up and see if if I would be interested in it. So I traveled there, and uh, sure enough, it had chitin in it, but it also had another molecule in there called beta-glucan. Now I had done some study and resource on beta-glucan, and that was an interesting uh molecule that I wanted to pursue because it was purported to have immunological uh capabilities. So we came back to the back to the States, and there was a company up in Worcester, Massachusetts, by the name of Alpha Beta Technologies, and they had developed a process, an injectable process for beta glucan extracted from these cell walls. And they had spent about $350 million developing this product as an injectable because that that's what the FDA required. And they were trying to get their injectable approved by the FDA, and uh they never could duplicate the process, and the

Discovering Beta-Glucan In A Waste Stream

SPEAKER_03 4:36

FDA rejected them, and ultimately they went they went bankrupt. And I tell that story only to say that um I knew the guys, they were MIT graduates. I knew some of these guys, and so I was able to go and buy their patents and some of their equipment, and I built a clinical trials facility in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and uh and I tweaked the process and it became uh quite successful. I was able to make this injectable beta glucan that the FDA required. Now we had an oral version of it, but they would the FDA would not accept that. It had to be injectable, and it was very expensive for us to do that. And in fact, we raised it right at that time. We we spent $250 million to get to that point. But we ran it through the FDA, we passed all of their trials, and so then we went into all the clinical trials with the FDA, and we we uh we tested four different cancers, and we we did the cancer research and testing of this beta-glucan molecule at uh Sloan Kettering, MD Anderson, Mayo, all the major um clinics, cancer clinics, and it was so successful that the FDA wanted to put it on a fast track so they could get it out to the public. Well, one clinical trial led to another and another and another, and uh 10 years later, this fast track, we still haven't gotten it to the public. And we found out that it was the pharmaceutical companies that actually own and control the FDA, and there was no money in it for them. So they're still holding up the uh material from being available to the public in an injectable form.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Now now, why is that, Mike? I'm confused. You it's very effective. And you you said it was fairly expensive as an injectable. Why would the FDA hold and the pharmaceutical companies combined hold up this product when it was previously on a fast track?

SPEAKER_03 6:49

And and and as I mentioned, uh the the FDA certainly wanted to get it out, but it was the pharmaceutical companies that were that actually controlled the

FDA Trials And Why Progress Stalls

SPEAKER_03 6:58

FDA, and there was no money in it for the pharmaceutical companies. They they couldn't make money.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

So because your company produced it and not them?

SPEAKER_03 7:07

That's correct.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Okay, I'm I understand.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

So they couldn't, and it's and it's still there, it's still live, it's still held up in up in the FDA. And uh so we we raised close to a billion dollars to get this this drug developed, and uh we had made, as I said earlier, uh uh uh oral dosage of it, and the the it the nutraceutical division was very successful. We were selling our beta glucan in the in a in an oral application, and uh I ended up selling our nutraceutical division so I could continue to fund the uh clinical trials for the injectable.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

All right, now back up. Now what now what did the the the nutraceutical, the oral version, was it effective against cancer?

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Well, yes, it was. Now, just to give a little background on what beta-glucan is for the listeners that are not familiar with beta-glucan, beta glucan is a polysaccharide, and uh we extract it from the from the cell walls of baker yeast and we purify it. And the particular glucan that we do is has a what we call a 1-3 and a 1-6 linkage, and that's important, and I'll come to that later. There are a lot of beta glucans on the market. You can get beta glucan from uh mushrooms, you can get them from algae, you can get it from uh oats and barley. There's a lot of sources for beta glucan, but there's and and of course yeast cell walls is a is a common one as well. But to be able to get the one three one six linkage, it takes a special process to do that, and that's what we that's what we owned and patented. So most of the glucans that are on the market today are the just the one three linkage. Now that becomes important because if if you have a tumor, your body and your immune system recognize it as self, and your immune system will not do anything about it. Well, our good Lord has given us a tremendous immune system and it does many, many things. And we found out through our testing that the tumor cells have proteins on them, and if you can dock on two of the receptor sites on that tumor cell, the tumor now becomes non-cell, and the immune system actually attacks it and kills the tumor cell. Now that was the mechanism of action for the injectable, but we found it to be true for the oral as well. So a couple years ago, uh, after being exhausted and trying to get the FDA to release it, I decided, and I had a calling, to provide the oral product in for friends and family that I had that had cancer. And uh and it and I offered this to them with the understanding that the oral intake is the same as the injectable intake. And basically, the systematic pathway for that is that if you take up the beta-glucan particles, uh it goes into the gut and the macrophages through the pyres patch, and it's taken up in the macrophage process into small fragments. And those fragments go in and are transported to the bone marrow and then released over days and weeks into the immune system. But the fragments bind with the lectin sites of the CR3 receptors uh and the NK cells, and they prime them for killing the cancer. And the uh the primed cells then kill the ICB3 optimized tumor cells that are tagged by the complement via these antibodies that that we've created with the um with the beta-glucan. Now,

How 1-3 1-6 Beta-Glucan Tags Tumors

SPEAKER_03 10:56

for many of you that have medical backgrounds, you you know that uh monoclonal antibodies were used for a long time as uh as an immunotherapy because it's a it's a it's really uh uh a man-made protein and it's it you know it's designed to act as the natural system, an antibody system by targeting specific cells. Well, our beta-glucan does that with the 1316 linkage. The problem with monoclonal antibodies is that they were only effective about 10 to 12 percent of the time. So they really didn't work and they really never became uh a good therapy for cancer treatment. Whereas our ours docked all the time on the receptor sites on the on the tumor. And as many of you know, a tumor is covered with a protein coating, and and uh generally what what happens is ours binds, like if you've got breast cancer, the proteins are perceptin, so we we know which different proteins that we need to to attack and how we're going to attack those. But that is the um mechanism of action once again of how beta-glucan works. So the the oral and the injectable have basically the same mechanism and have the same uh success rates. And so we've we actually developed immunotherapy before people even knew how to spell it. And this was back in the late 90s and the early 2000s.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Well, now, are there any cancers that the the beta-glucan does not work against?

SPEAKER_03 12:35

We have we haven't identified any that it doesn't work on. Some of them are extremely difficult cancers, some of them are very aggressive, and as a result of of what we've seen with the uh with the COVID vaccine, etc., uh we're seeing turbo cancers coming out that that we have never seen before. And that's today is a big problem for us because people who had dormant or latent cancer cells now uh they've revealed and they appear so fast they give you a very short period of time or a very small window with which to treat them, you know. But if apart from the turbo cancers, we have run all types of cancers at the different cancer clinics, and uh we have done breast cancers and we've done prostate cancer, lymphomas. We've done, you name it, we've done a clinical trial on it because it was so successful that's what the FDU FDA would do. They'd ask, well, we need to run one more trial and we need to and uh you know run it with this cancer and see how it works on this cancer.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Now, how about blood blood cancer like leukemias um and and um like lymphomas?

SPEAKER_03 13:50

How about lymphomas, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh I haven't we haven't worked with any of the blood cancers, but again, the the mechanism of action is is is much the same. Now the problem we've had, uh Dr. Jackson, with even with our clinical trials, is that the the people that we would do had that we use as the patient population in our clinical trials uh were normally stage four cancer patients. So to build a large patient population was always the challenge, and it took us a long time because and and many of our patients would die before they ever got to the clinical trial. So that was always a uh a problem for us. But we uh we were managed we managed to get patient populations, large ones on a number of the cancers, and lung cancer and breast cancer in particular. Uh, we did a lot of uh a lot of work with that and curing of the cancer. And I mean, we just did we didn't put it in remission, we actually killed the tumors, removed the tumors. I mean, they were gone. And uh, and that's why the FDA got excited, and that's why uh we got excited. So that's why, and again, that kind of led to immunotherapy not only for cancer, but for other things as well. And the beta-glucan is good for many, many things besides cancer because of the uh immune modulation that takes place.

Dosing, Trained Immunity, And Prevention

SPEAKER_03 15:10

And what's interesting with this beta-glucan 1316, it has what you call memory, trained memory. So if you've had something in your system, the beta-glucan, if you continue to take it, which we always recommend that you do, it's a trained immunity, and whatever comes in will be attacked straight away and uh and taken care of.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

So now when you say it works for other things besides cancer, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Well, we for anything that invades your immune system. Uh what what we recommend and what I recommend is that you know that we had determined through our clinical trials that two milligrams per kilogram of body weight was the optimal dosage for potentiating your immune system. So uh a lot of our people, most of our people that know me, they all take a daily dosage of 200 milligram tablets, two 100 milligram tablets, which are 200 milligrams daily, and it potentiates their immune system about 35%. So it's armed and ready. The NK cells, the T cells, the C R3 receptors, and Nectin 1 are already armed for whatever comes in to invade your body, and it will attack it straight away. And if you do feel something coming on, then you just double the dosage and it'll be short-lived and it'll be mild if you get it at all. And that could be anything from a flu, a cold, uh, upper respiratory infection, you name it. Uh your immune system, which at the end of the day takes care of everything in your body, takes care of anything that comes into your body. And that's the uh the real benefit of beta-glucan, not only for cancer applications, but for anything.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Well, now, Mike, do you think it's do you think it's cancer preventative for people who don't even have a cancer if they were to take some of this on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_03 17:09

I do, and the reason I do is that uh we all have cancer cells in our body. All of us have cancer cells in our body, and generally they won't form into a tumor, but sometimes that's what happens. They migrate and they form into a tumor, or there's some external influence that creates those molecules or those cancer cells to combine and and form a tumor. So I've been taking beta-glucan for 20 years, Dr. Jackson. I'm 78 years old, and I don't have an ache, I don't have a pain, I am, I mean, I'm just and I I I'm great. I just feel great. My wife is 77, same thing, but we attribute it to the beta-glucan because uh we never get sick. Uh when COVID came, we didn't get COVID. I mean, we we, you know, the immune system just took care of everything that was uh coming into our bodies. So taking a daily dose of beta glucan, it it's a natural product. It will not hurt you. We as when we did the test for the clinical trials to see what's the maximum amount you could take before you had any adverse events, it was a huge amount. Yeah, you could never take that much, you know. Yeah, yeah. Of course, anything can kill you if you take too much. If you drink too much water, it'll kill you. But the amount of beta-glucan that you can take is an enormous amount. And in cancer patients, we normally start them out with 1,500 milligrams a day.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

So what is what is your what's your standard

A Practical Cancer Protocol And Results

SPEAKER_02 18:40

protocol then for for treating people with cancer? Uh uh do you have a protocol or regimen?

SPEAKER_03 18:45

I do. I do have a protocol, and our standard protocol, uh, of course, our the main ingredient is our beta glucan. It we know it can can take care of the cancer in and of itself. But when we found out that we if we combined it with, for instance, ivermectin and or fibendazole, depending on what the cancer is, and depending on what the stage of uh the liver health is of the patient, that the the cancer treatment was much faster when combined with either one of those others. So our protocol generally calls for fibendazole, ivermectin, vitamin E, cacurimin, a CB oil tincture that we use a case that pre depending on what stage cancer it is, if they're in pain and all, we use a CB oil tincture, and of course, then the beta-glucan. So that's a protocol that we use, and I use it on friends and family. And and uh of course, friends and family have friends and family, and so uh my desk is covered up with with folders of of people that we have treated successfully with uh with cancer. And one side story, I have a one of my colleagues, uh Dr. Doug Van Thor, uh developed a tumor on his carotid artery, and it was as big as a lemon, and uh he went to his oncologist, and there was nothing they can do, and it was growing rapidly. And uh Dr. Van Thor called me and says, Mike, anything you can do to help me? I said, Sure, we'll put you on this protocol, you know. Well, he says, I'll do anything because they they sent me home to get my affairs in order. I may have six, I may have eight weeks, because is there anything you can do that quickly? And I thought, well, sure, Doug, we'll we'll give it a try. So we put him on the protocol, and to this day he is still alive, and this was like eight years ago.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

It completely got rid of the tumor, and he's cancer free now. And it was, oh, maybe two years ago he called me up. He's he'd gone and had a checkup, and he had a mass in his lungs, so he had lung cancer, and that may have been the source of the cancer that began with for his for the nodule that he had in his carotid artery. We put him back on the uh on the protocol, and within six weeks, the the the tumor in his lung was completely gone.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

That's amazing, Mike. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

I can tell stories like this all night long, and and I have been very blessed and very fortunate that the people we have treated, and most of them that I see are ones that come to me in their final stages when the oncologists have given up and we have cured their cancer with this protocol, and it's amazing. And and I give God all the glory for it. He

Where To Get It And What To Avoid

SPEAKER_03 21:32

is the master physician in all of this, but my my my wish came true. There are ways to treat cancer without killing people with radiation and chemotherapy.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah. Now well, how do my patients get a hold of the beta glucan? Uh uh it doesn't sound like you need a physician for beta glucan. How how do people get a hold of that?

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yes, that's a that's a great question because it they they don't need a physician because it is the nutraceutical. And the company that is is uh bottling and supplying the beta glucan, and they got a huge market here all over the world actually, is called BetterWay Health. And if you will Google BetterWay Health, uh they are the ones that have the beta glucan with the 1316 linkage. And I always warn people be careful with the beta glue. Don't go on Amazon and buy anything, just go directly to Better Way Health and order it from them. So they make a product which I suggest on a daily basis, that it it also has some antioxidants we added to it, like selenium and reservatrol and uh vitamin C, which is a really good antioxidants. So I I normally recommend those if people just want to have a daily maintenance dose, which will have the same uh mechanism of action if it if if cancer develops, it you know, it it will still be working on it at a lower dose. And if if something does develop, uh like I say, we go up to at least 1,500 milligrams a day of the beta-glucane in the mornings. Now, the interesting thing is our beta-glucane is not water-soluble, so if someone has a problem swallowing, and a lot of times we have a problem because there'll be esophageal cancer or uh tongue cancer, uh cancers like this, and people can't but you can dissolve it in water. It won't dissolve, but you can put it in water and drink it because it's not water soluble, although we do make a water-soluble version that we use for other applications. So uh it's a great product for people to take just to maintain their immune system, and it's a fantastic product to take if you have cancer.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

I got you. Man, this is amazing, Mike. Uh, I'm just telling you, my patients and my listeners need to hear this, and this is so fascinating. I might need to have you come back and just tell stories of patients that have been healed of their cancer because I think my listeners will just want to hear those stories. Can I can I get you to come back one day and just tell stories of people that have gotten healed?

SPEAKER_03 24:06

We can just tell stories and and it and it and it's amazing because the people that have been cured of their cancer, they say, Mike, I mean, and I say this with all humility, they'll call me. I almost weekly, Mike, you saved my life. I say, Do you mind if I have a patient call you and you tell them about it? And they I absolutely have them call me, you know, and we'll tell them, you know, what we went through and how you cured the cloud, how this protocol cured the cancer. I didn't cure it, God cured them. But there's a lot of data, and I have a lot of information, and there's books written about it. And we have uh we have a um a professor of pathology that's

Evidence, Japan’s Approach, And Closing

SPEAKER_03 24:44

at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, who has written books about us and about beta-glucane. I have books, if you will, uh where they have uh written about the benefits of the beta glucan and cancers and all other types of diseases. But there were there's a lot of peer review, there's a lot of clinical trials, there's a lot of information. If you go on AI, uh you'll you'll and and type it in, you'll see where where we have treated in a lot of cancers in the cancer institutes and how we did it and what it did. As an example, uh in Japan, they're using beta glucan now. One of our guys markets it in Japan. And uh that is that is their first line of defense for cancer in Japan. That's all they used. And they they've done it in such a way that that that it's prescribed now for them. You you can't just get it. You have to go to a uh uh an oncologist in Japan and then they have to prescribe it for you, but uh it's nothing more than our beta glucan that they're that they're giving them. But that's their first they don't use chemo or anything of that nature, they strictly go with beta glucan for curing cancer in Japan.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 25:55

And we've seen that in a lot of countries as well, but in Japan in particular.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Gotcha, gotcha. All right, well, we're running out of time, Mike, and and this is just so fascinating. And uh, I hope my listeners will pay close attention and and uh this it just boggles my mind that the FDA would hold this up for so long. All right, well, you're listening to my my good friend Mike Cato, you're listening to More Than Medicine. And uh, Mike, I just want to thank you for your expertise. I thank you for your kindness and coming on More Than Medicine, and maybe we can have you back again another day. Would that be okay?

SPEAKER_03 26:32

Anytime, Dr. Jackson. I appreciate what you're doing, I appreciate your ministry, and uh I appreciate your parents' uh patients looking towards you for solutions, and I'm I'm glad that we're able to at least provide a solution uh for your patients.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

All right. Well, thank you, sir. You're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson. My guest today is my good friend Mike Cato. We'll be back again next week. And until then, may the Lord bless you. Real good.