The 5 Questions Every Cancer Patient Must Ask to Avoid the Wrong Treatment

This video discusses the critical issue of cancer treatment heterogeneity, where the same cancer type and stage can present with different markers. This often leads to patients receiving ineffective medications, highlighting a crisis in cancer therapy.

Deeper analysis, using advanced techniques like next generation sequencing, could identify the correct targeted therapy and improve patient outcomes. Understanding what is cancer at the genetic level is crucial for effective care.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why cancer treatment may not be one-size-fits-all
• What tumor heterogeneity means
• The role of DNA and RNA testing
• Why immune system considerations matter
• How treatment decisions are made
• What questions to ask your oncologist
• Why deeper data may influence care
• How personalized approaches are evolving

📍 Envita Medical Centers – Scottsdale, AZ
🌐 Learn more: www.envita.com
📞 Speak with a care coordinator: 866-830-4576

“The right questions can help you better understand your treatment options.”

Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any medical decisions. Individual results will vary, and Envita Medical Centers does not guarantee outcomes. Some treatments discussed may not be FDA-approved or available in all locations. Testimonials are shared with patient consent and may not reflect typical results. Do not delay or disregard professional medical care based on the podcast's content. Certain treatments may be available only at Envita’s international clinic in Hermosillo, Mexico. No specific outcomes are promised or implied.
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Outcomes Disclaimer
The results referenced from Envita's Precision Cancer Care: 35-Fold Improvement in Response Rates are from a retrospective analysis of 199 late-stage cancer patients treated at Envita Medical Centers between 2021 and 2023, as published in the Journal of Cancer Therapy. These outcomes are not guaranteed and will vary based on individual factors such as cancer type, stage, genetics, immunity and prior treatments. Any comparisons to standard care or clinical trials are based on published data and internal analysis, not head-to-head studies. Individual results will vary.

You can read the full peer-reviewed study at: 

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=132493

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

What if the treatment you're getting right now was never really designed for you? And the problem is two cancers of the same type and stage are going to have totally different markers. It's called heterogenicity. And when you test for those markers, you can find often that patients are on the wrong medication. So what if one drug target could change your life because it's actually the one you need and it's being missed because no one's looking deep enough? That's the real crisis in cancer treatment. It's that patients don't have the right targets because of lack of testing and custom drug design. And so when you have the data, you can get better care and you can custom make the medicine and deliver it right to the tumor. Many patients are still being treated like a label, a one size fits all, and they're not being treated for their molecular targets. So stay with me because today in this episode, I'm going to show you why standard of care is often just one size fits all oncology. It really doesn't matter where you go. And it could be missing the boat. And here are the five questions I'm going to teach you that you should ask every oncologist right now, right where in your middle of care, so you know you're headed in the right direction. I'm Dr. Dino Prado, founder of NVITA Medical Center. For the last 25 years, my team and I have helped thousands of patients who've failed some of the top cancer hospitals across the country. And when we test and we do deeper testing and find their targets and build their custom treatment and their immune system, we find they respond so much better. Now, before you change anything, make sure you're working with a doctor. And so let's get started. So here's the thing patients need to understand. Cancer is not really a disease of tissue alone, but it's about the markers, what's underneath, what's in the DNA, RNA, immune landscape, tumor microenvironment, what's causing the cancer, all these different things. And then this changes the entire battle because once you have this information, your treatment plan can be built directly on your cancer. Now, I've been doing this for multiple decades now. And I can tell you, I just don't know how standard of care oncology still is working in 24 markers, biopsy, tumor markers, and imaging instead of a thousand plus markers with deep understanding because that's how you actually get things done. That's how you improve outcomes for patients, hold remissions, have better care. That's because we have more information today, but people don't have access to it. And that's what we need to change. So it's not treating the name of the disease and the type of cancer, it's treating the markers. That's the big difference. That's why patients are getting in trouble with care and it fails is because they don't have the markers. And many oncologists are trained in these national comprehensive cancer network guidelines, and they are not trained in molecular targeting. In fact, any doctor we bring onto our team that's already an oncologist, primary care doctor, naturopathic doctor, doesn't matter where they're coming from, when they work in our precision oncology algorithms, it takes one year and 2,000 hours to get proficiently trained on molecular targeting, RNA transcriptomics, DNA molecular targeting, immune spatial biology, immune profiling, and how to custom build the treatment for each patient. It requires deep molecular markers, interpretation, matching, building the right care in the right sequence, and that takes experience and knowledge. That's what precision oncology brings to the world of cancer as we look into the future. And we're moving way beyond because FDA guidance has always reflected the double blind placebo clinical trial. But there's a new method coming out for fast track where personalization is going to be the driver, in my opinion. In other words, it's not about treating everybody the same. It's finding what's driving your cancer, what's active in your cancer, what are the right targets for your cancer, what's suppressing your immune system, and then going on, off label, integrative agents, combining those to work in your favor so you can overcome resistance, go into remission and hold it longer. That's gonna be the key. Immunotherapy is at the center of this. That's how real precision oncology thinks and operates. And here's why that matters so much. We've entered into an era where some cancer drugs are approved not only by, let's say, tumor location, but by molecular targets. So we're moving in the right direction. And the more we personalize that, we move to what I call N of one. This is each person has a treatment custom built to them, not double blind placebo clinical trials, because everybody is so different. If one, if we know one thing about cancer, is that it's unique to people, same type and stage of cancer, gonna have different markers, hydrogenicity. And until we address that, that means we're gonna fail patients. So that's what I've spent my two and a half decades on is getting that addressed at a high level from custom building the medications to testing to delivering the treatments. So we never look at anyone the same. We look at their mutations, we look at their drivers, we look at their immune profiling, their tumor microenvironment, and that way we have the best chance of helping patients. Now, there are several studies that I've mentioned over and over again that kind of already tell us this is working. Of course, our own study done in 2024, where we looked at several hundred patients, and you saw an improvement of 35 times response, 35 times, not 35%, and 43 times better quality of life because of targeting. And other studies like iPredict, which showed 20 plus percent improvement just with DNA markers, or the Winter studies, which showed the same improvement but using RNA, and that wasn't even involving immunotherapy targeting. So we can greatly improve late-stage, complex, early diagnosis treatments with precision oncology. Not because it's another fancy word, but because it involves much more data and much more actionable targets. And that's where the work takes place. You don't have to give high doses when you have the right targets. You can give the right dose to the patient, and then you see the quality of life improved. Patients can go hiking, they can have energy, they can rebound faster because they're not getting all that toxicity that oftentimes they were on the wrong drug and didn't need in the first place, and it suffocated their immune system, stopping them from getting the true response that they needed. So, see, this is the key. It's not just the discovery of new drugs and new targets. Those are great, but it's putting it all together for each patient. That should be the job of every physician to be trained in precision oncology. And the difficulty is this insurance companies are not covering it, and there's a big reason for that. They operate in the cancer industrial complex. Hospitals just keep producing the same protocols because they're billable, not because of the best. Standard of care does not mean the best care, it means absolutely that standard. Medicare, covered care is all standard. It's not the best in the world. And that's what patients deserve. So that's what I'm working to, you know, accomplish with our staff and team. But in this education, I want to encourage you as a patient to know what to ask. So you're not stuck in the typical only what's available, only what's reimbursable, all those blocks. Instead, you want to ask these five questions from your oncologist so you can overcome that. Number one, are you running DNA next generation sequencing on my tumor? Everybody should do that. If you're not doing that, find another doctor. This at least can find smart drugs that can slow things down, buy you time to get immunotherapy on board because you need to know what those markers are. Now that's a few hundred markers, and I don't consider that precision, but it's a move in the right direction. And you'll say, why don't you consider that precision? Because you're gonna ask question number two along with DNA, are you running RNA transcriptomics? Now we have a thousand plus markers. Remember, the DNA tells us where the car is driving on the road, where the mutations are. The RNA transcriptnomics tells us all the escape routes, all the routes that the car is gonna go in, and we need to shut those down. That's why smart drugs will only work for some time on the DNA. But if you have RNA transcriptomics, now you have a thousand plus markers and you're shutting down all the escape routes, allowing the treatment to work better, meaning you're able to see where the cancer is gonna grow, what pathways can be turned on and shut them off. That is absolutely critical in precision oncology. And now we've got two good markers next generation sequencing DNA and RNA transcriptomics. Now the third question: what is the treatment for my immune system? That's gonna be the key in my clinical experience to long-term responses. Patients are told, well, there's no immunotherapy for you. Immunotherapy is critical. I'm talking about custom-built immunotherapies that help turn cold tumors hot, go direct to tumor, and help patients better respond in so many different solid tumors where treatment isn't there. That's the top three questions. Number four, what evidence do you have that the chemotherapy that you've selected for me is gonna work? Did you do any testing? Are you just following National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines? Am I just basically the double blind placebo clinical trial group? Because you don't want to be that. You want more data beyond that to guide you. It doesn't mean that NCCN guidelines don't have a place, but they can't be the full driver without testing. You don't want to be thrown into protocols. You want testing to guide, because if you have testing, you're going to have better responses in my clinical experience. And other studies have proven that. Now, question number five Are there targeted therapies in clinical trial based on my mutations? And if not, what else can we do? Because sometimes what happens is when patients fail care, they're thrown into a clinical trial. I'm personally not a big fan, even though I do think there's a place for clinical trials to be for the clinical trial to be used exclusively. I like it to be used in combination because where we see the best results is where you have all that DNA, RNA, immune profiling, and custom on off-label adjuvants that are combined, using the smart drugs, using integrative agents, using off-label medications, that, but they're all based on targeting. That's the key to precision oncology. So you want to get out of the standard of care and you want to get into precision and of want. That's my goal. So I hope you understand that this is the key. This, no matter what new drug comes out, new therapy, this is what we need to focus on. This is how we're going to change the game in cancer. Now, over 90% of you watching still haven't subscribed. So please subscribe and get this word out to family and friends so that they know that there's more than the one size fits all. There's precision and it makes a big difference. I hope you found this episode helpful and may the Lord bless you on your journey to healing.