Turning Everyday Medicines Into Cancer Fighters: A Frustrated Radiation Oncologist's Discovery

Are you searching for cancer treatment options that go beyond the standard of care? In this episode, we explore the groundbreaking work of the ReDO Project (Repurposing Drugs in Oncology). We discuss the "untapped source" of novel therapies: the use of existing, well-known non-cancer drugs to fight cancer.

Learn how this international collaboration is working to identify effective, affordable, and low-toxicity treatments that can be used immediately—either added to existing protocols or used in novel combinations. Discover how repurposing drugs is cutting through the red tape of traditional development to meet the unmet needs of patients today.

To explore how these options may apply to your care, contact Dr. Kumar at LifeWellMD. Web: lifewellmd.com Phone: 561-210-9999.  

Disclaimer:
The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your supplement regimen or health routine. Individual needs and reactions vary, so it’s important to make informed decisions with the guidance of your physician.

Connect with Us:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with someone who might benefit. For more insights and updates, visit our website at Lifewellmd.com.

Stay Informed, Stay Healthy: 
Remember, informed choices lead to better health. Until next time, be well and take care of yourself.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the deep dive. We are shifting gears a little bit today. Usually, you know, we're talking lifestyle tweaks, diet, maybe some biohacking basics. But today, we are going deep.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Really deep.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Yeah. Into the actual machinery of modern medicine. We're talking about a topic that is just, I

Setting The Mission And Focus

SPEAKER_01 0:18

mean, it's absolute core to the mission we share with Dr. Kumar and the team at LifeWellMD.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

It really is.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

It's about innovation, it's about hope, and you know, frankly, it's about being smarter with the tools we already have.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Aaron Powell It is. And I'm so glad we're tackling this because this subject, repurposing drugs in oncology or the Radio Project, it's something that usually stays buried in medical journals. Right. But the implications for, you know, the average person or anyone worried about longevity and cancer care, they're just massive.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Aaron Ross Powell MassI is the perfect word. We're going to explore this idea that the cure, or maybe just a huge breakthrough for cancer, might not be some futuristic sci-fi molecule we haven't even invented yet. It might be sitting on the shelf at your local pharmacy, disguised as a diabetes pill or like blood pressure medication.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Aaron Powell It's that concept of hiding in plain sight.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Exactly. So our mission today is to unpack the REDEO project. We're going to look at how we can take safe, cheap, non-cancer drugs and turn them into cancer fighters.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Aaron Powell And we also have to talk about

Safety Disclaimer And Patient Guidance

SPEAKER_00 1:20

why the current system makes this so difficult and how this project is trying to fix that.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Aaron Powell Yes. But okay, before we get into all the biochemistry and the economics, I think just stop us for a second. We have to.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

We are going to be mentioning specific types of drugs, specific medical strategies. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

And this is the part where everyone needs to lean in and listen really closely.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Aaron Powell This deep dive is strictly for educational purposes. We are exploring the science, the data. We are not, and I cannot stress this enough, we are not giving medical advice.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Zero medical advice.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

If you have cancer, if you're undergoing treatment, do not change a single thing based on what you hear in a podcast. You must discuss every single option with your oncologist.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

We want you to be the most informed patient in that waiting room, not the doctor. But if you are looking for a team that actually understands this stuff, a team that looks at the whole picture of wellness and longevity.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

That's where Dr. Kumar and his team come in.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Exactly. You can actually start your own journey with LifeWell MD just by calling them.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

It's a great resource if you want to turn this kind of information into a personal plan. You can reach the clinic at 561-210-9999.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Okay, disclaimer done. Let's get into the meat of this, the Redio project. Repurposing drugs in oncology. Let's start with the basics. When we say repurposing, I think of, you know, turning an old mason jar into a flower vase. But in medicine, it's a bit more complex, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

A little bit, yeah. The definition that the Rideo project uses is very

What Drug Repurposing Really Means

SPEAKER_00 2:48

specific. They're talking about the use of existing and well-characterized non-cancer drugs as new treatments for cancer.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Okay, let's parse that. Well-characterized, that sounds like jargon. What does that actually mean for me for the patient?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Aaron Powell It means we aren't guessing. A well-characterized drug is one where we know everything about it. We know how the body absorbs it, how the liver processes it, and most importantly, we know its safety profile. We know the side effects because millions of people have already taken it for years, just for a totally different reason.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Aaron Powell So, unlike a brand new experimental chemotherapy where you're just sort of crossing your fingers, hoping it doesn't shut down your kidneys. Right. These are drugs where the safety manual is already written.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Aaron Powell Precisely. And that is a massive advantage, which we'll definitely get to. But the core concept is taking a drug approved for, let's say, a fungal infection or heart failure and finding a utility for it in oncology.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Aaron Powell Okay, but this is where I get stuck. And I think some listeners might too. How does a heart failure pill fight a tumor? They just seem like totally different biological problems.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Aaron Powell That's a really common misconception. We tend to think of diseases in these isolated silos. This is a heart problem, this is a lung problem. But biologically, the body is

How Non‑Cancer Drugs Target Tumors

SPEAKER_00 4:03

a network of pathways. Yeah. And cancer relies on certain pathways to grow. It needs blood vessels, it needs energy, it needs to evade the immune system.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Right. Cancer is a hungry beast.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Exactly. Now imagine a drug designed for diabetes. What does it do? It regulates energy and sugar metabolism. Well, if a cancer cell is just guzzling sugar to grow, and you introduce a drug that changes how cells handle sugar.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

You starve the beasts.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Starve the beast. Or maybe a drug for hypertension works by relaxing blood vessels. Well, tumors need to build their own chaotic blood vessels to survive. If you disrupt that signaling, you choke the tumor. So the mechanism isn't magic. It's about hitting the biological targets that cancer shares with other conditions.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

It makes total sense. It's like okay, let me try an analogy here. Go for it. You buy a wrench to fix a leaky sink in your kitchen. That's its approved use. But then your car breaks down the garage. The wrench doesn't know it's a kitchen wrench, it just turns bolts. If the car engine has a bolt that fits, the wrench works.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Aaron Powell That's a fair analogy, but I'd add a layer to it. In this case, it's not just that the wrench fits, it's that we've used this wrench for 50 years in the kitchen, so we know exactly how hard we can pull on it before it snaps. We know it won't explode. Right. That knowledge, the safety data, is almost as valuable as the tool itself.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Aaron Powell Because it saves time.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Aaron Powell It saves time and it saves toxicity. And that leads us to the two ways Rido sees this happening. It's not just about swapping one drug for another. Aaron Powell Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

I saw there was a distinction between additions and novel combinations. Break that down for us.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Aaron Powell So the first approach is additions to existing protocols. This is the most common entry point. You have a patient on standard chemotherapy, it's working, but you know, maybe not well enough, or the side effects are brutal. You add a repurposed drug, let's say a common anti-inflammatory to the mix to boost the chemo. To boost the efficacy, or maybe to protect the healthy tissue from the chemo's damage. It's a synergistic effect. But the second approach, that's the

Additions Versus Novel Combinations

SPEAKER_00 6:04

really radical one. Novel combinations.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Aaron Powell This is the one that sounds like a cocktail.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

It is. The idea is to combine multiple repurposed non-cancer drugs together, potentially without the high-dose toxic chemotherapy.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Aaron Powell Wait, so just using a mix of, say, a diabetes drug, a statin, and an antibiotic to treat cancer.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Theoretically, yes. If you can block three or four different survival pathways of the tumor at the same time using these safe drugs, you might be able to control the cancer with a fraction of the toxicity of standard chemo.

unknown 6:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

That is the holy grail for repurposing.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Aaron Powell That sounds incredible. Low toxicity, drugs we already have. I mean, honestly, it sounds too good to be true. Right. If this is so obvious, why isn't every oncologist in the world doing this right now? Why do we need a special REDO project to push for it?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

And now we're getting to the elephant in the room. This isn't a science problem primarily. It's a business model problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Productivity issue.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

That's the polite term they use in the literature. But let's look at the valley of death in pharmaceutical development. To bring a new cancer drug to market, you are looking at 10

The Business Model Barrier

SPEAKER_00 7:10

to 15 years and upwards of two billion dollars.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Two billion. With a B.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Easily. And a huge chunk of that time and money goes into phase one trials. Phase one is purely about safety. If I give this new molecule to a human, well, they drop dead.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

You have to prove they won't before you can even see if it cures anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

But with repurposed drugs, we skip it. We skip the whole phase.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Generally, yes. We already know the safety profile of aspirin or metformin or beta blockers, so you can jump straight to phase two, which is does it work?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

This cuts years off the timeline and millions, if not billions, off the budget.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Aaron Powell Okay, so it's cheaper and faster. That sounds like a capitalist dream. Why aren't big pharma companies jumping all over this?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Aaron Powell Because there is no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Most of these well-characterized drugs are generic. Their patents expired decades ago. Any company can manufacture them.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Ah So if Pfizer or Merck spends $50 million proving that a generic 10-cent pill cures cancer, they can't patent it.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

They can't charge $10,000 a dose.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

They would be doing the research for the public good, not for shareholder value. And the current system is built on exclusivity. Without a patent, there's just no financial incentive for the industry to fund the trials.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Aaron Powell That is that's just frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

It is deeply frustrating. It's a market failure. We have these potential treatments, this untapped source, as the Radio project calls it. But because they are cheap, they get ignored.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

And that's where the global impact comes in, right? Because if these drugs are cheap, that means people in developing countries could actually afford them.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Aaron Powell That is a huge part of the Radio mission. Cancer care right now is becoming financially toxic. Even in wealthy countries, new drugs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But if you can build a protocol out of generic drugs that cost pennies

Global Access And Affordability

SPEAKER_00 9:00

a day, you democratize cancer care. You make it accessible in Mumbai, in rural Africa, and yes, right here for people who are underinsured.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

It aligns so well with what we see at Life WellMD, the idea that health shouldn't be a luxury.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Dr. Coomer talks about this all the time. Wellness and longevity are about access to what works. If the best tool is a cheap generic, use it. Don't chase the shiny, expensive thing just because it has a better marketing budget.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

So we have a treasure chest of drugs, we have a clear need, but the system is broken. Enter the Radio project. Who are these people? Are they a company?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

No, and that's really important. They are an international collaboration working in the not-for-profit sector. It's a mix of researchers, clinicians, patient advocates. Okay. Think of them as the people trying to build a bridge over that valley of death because the pharmaceutical

Inside The REDO Collaboration

SPEAKER_00 9:52

companies won't build it.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Aaron Powell And they have a specific way of doing this. The literature describes a messy library problem.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Aaron Powell That's a great way to visualize it. Imagine a library where all the books are just thrown on the floor. The data exists. There might be a paper from 1985 showing a drug kills cancer cells in a patri dish and a small trial from 1990 in a different country.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

But no one's connected the dots.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

No one has. The data is dispersed and unsummarized.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Aaron Powell So Radio is the librarian.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

They're the librarian and the detective. Their mission has four distinct pillars. First, simply identifying the candidates. Because there are thousands of drugs, you can't test them all. You have to pick the ones with the most potential.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Triage.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Right. Second, and this is crucial for doctors, they review and summarize the data. If you are a busy clinical investigator, you don't have time to hunt down obscure papers. Radio creates a dossier that says, here's the evidence for this drug, here is why you should care.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

They make it easy for the doctors to say yes to a trial.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Exactly. Third, they document how to use it. You can't just throw pills at a patient. You need a protocol. Dosing, timing, combinations. And fourth, and this is the most important part, they facilitate clinical trials.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Real trials.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Real rigorous clinical trials because anecdotal evidence isn't

The Librarian Approach To Evidence

SPEAKER_00 11:10

enough. You need to prove it. And I really respect that the Reedy Bell Project is explicitly looking for positive or negative evidence.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Aaron Powell Meaning they are okay with finding out a drug doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Aaron Powell They have to be. That's science. If you only look for yes, you're biased. They want the truth. If a drug doesn't work, we need to know so we can stop talking about it and move on to the next one. Right. They are suggesting areas for preclinical work to fill the gaps, not just, you know, hyping up miracle cures.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

It's the difference between wellness influencer talk and actual medical research.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

They want hard data.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Trevor Burrus Correct. And that rigor is what gives this project authority. When they recommend a trial, people listen because they know the homework has been done.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Aaron Powell So let's bring this down to the ground level. We've got listeners who are generally healthy, maybe just interested in longevity.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

But we also have listeners who might be facing a diagnosis or have a family member who is. We talked about unmet needs. What does that look like in practice?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Aaron Powell Unmet needs is such a sterile term for a heartbreaking reality. It means patients for whom the standard of care has failed. They've done the chemo, they've done the radiation, and the cancer is still there. Or maybe they are just too frail to handle the harsh toxicity of standard chemo.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Aaron Powell They've run out of road. They've run out of road on the standard map. Radio is trying to draw a new map. The hope factor here is about speed. Speed. Yeah. Because we are repurposing, we can get these trials running and get results

Unmet Needs And Trial Speed

SPEAKER_01 12:35

much faster than waiting for a new drug to be invented.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

For a patient who doesn't have five years to wait, that speed is everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Aaron Powell And it's not just about treating late-stage cancer. This connects to the longevity space too.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Absolutely. Many of the mechanisms we're talking about, reducing inflammation, regulating insulin, managing cellular stress, these are the same pillars of anti-aging and longevity.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

That's the aha moment for me. The things that might help fight cancer are often the same things that keep us healthy in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

It is all connected. And that is why Dr. Kumar's approach at Life Well MD is so relevant here. The clinic doesn't just look at fixing you when you break.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

It's about optimizing the system so it doesn't break. And if it does break, being open-minded enough to use every tool available, whether it's a high-tech laser or a 50-year-old generic pill. It's about having a guide. You know, we talk about this messy library of data. A patient can't navigate that alone. You

Longevity Links And Systems Thinking

SPEAKER_01 13:31

need someone who knows where the books are.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

You really do. Medicine is becoming incredibly complex. The amount of data coming out every month is overwhelming, even for doctors. Having a team that is dedicated to sifting through that, looking for the repurposed gems, looking for the lifestyle factors. I mean, that is invaluable.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So if you are listening to this and thinking, I don't want to navigate this alone, or I want to know what else is out there for my longevity, that is the call to action today. Don't guess. Get a team.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Start the conversation. The number for Life Well MD is 561-210-9999. It's about taking control of your health narrative.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

561-210-99999. Okay, we're coming to the end here, and I want to zoom out one last time. We've talked about the drugs, the costs, the trials. What is the big takeaway for the listener?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

For me, the takeaway is that innovation isn't always about new. We are so conditioned by tech culture, the new iPhone, the new app, the new Tesla. We think better equals newer. But in biology, sometimes better just means smarter application of what we know.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

It's humbling.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

It is. It suggests that the solutions to our biggest problems, cancer, Alzheimer's, autoimmune

Final Takeaways And Safe Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 14:40

disease, might not require a trillion-dollar moonshot. They might require us to look backward at what we've already discovered and ask, what did we miss?

SPEAKER_01 14:48

What did we miss? That's a powerful question.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

The Redado project says we missed a lot, and they are going back to find it.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

And remember, while this is all so exciting, it is complex.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

I will say it one last time because I care about the people listening. Yeah. Do not self-medicate. Just because aspirin is over the counter doesn't mean high doses are safe for you. Just because a diabetes drug has anti-cancer properties doesn't mean you should take it if you don't have diabetes.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

You could crash your blood sugar and end up in the ER.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Exactly. Medicine is a balance. The Radio Project is doing the science to find that balance. Your job is to bring this information to your doctor and ask, is this relevant to me?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Use the knowledge to open the door.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Exactly. Don't use it to treat yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Be the informed patient. That's the goal. And if you want help being that patient or just optimizing your life, reach out to Dr. Kumar. 561-210-9999.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

561-210-9999.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I want to leave you with one final thought that came from the research notes. They mentioned that there are simply too many candidate drugs to test them all right now.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

It's a bottleneck of abundance.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

A bottleneck of abundance. It makes you wonder. If we are sitting on a pile of cancer treatments disguised as other pills, what other miracles are hiding in our medicine cabinets?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

What is the aspirin of the next century that we are already taking for headache today?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

That is the question that keeps me up at night in the best possible way.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Thanks for diving in with us. This is a heavy one, but a hopeful one.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Take curious.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

And we'll see you on the next deep dive.