This Isn't Experimental: Cream Rewires Your Immune System to Destroy Cancer

Imiquimod (Aldara) cream turns surface tumors into a cancer vaccine. Here’s how.

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Episode Description:

If you have a visible melanoma, wart, or suspicious skin lesion, most doctors will want to freeze it or cut it out.

Simple. Done.

But what if that spot could actually help train your immune system to attack cancer elsewhere in your body?

There’s a topical therapy — one you may already recognize — that activates a powerful immune response right at the surface.

In our newest post, Dr. Chaplin explains:

• How imiquimod (Aldara) works
• Why local inflammation can create systemic immune activation
• When this may matter most for melanoma and HPV-related cancers
• And why removing every lesion immediately may not always be the best strategy

If you’re navigating skin cancer treatment, HPV leasions, or metastatic melanoma, this is worth understanding.

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info@elevatingcancertreatment.com

https://elevatingcancertreatment.com

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Disclaimer:
The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only, and does not constitute medical advice. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard or read in this podcast or on this channel.
Reliance on any information provided by Dr. Jay Chaplin or Elevating Cancer Treatment is solely at your own risk. Dr. Jay Chaplin is a scientist and drug developer, not a medical doctor providing patient care. The content presented here reflects general scientific understanding and research, and may not be applicable to your individual health circumstances. Individual medical conditions and treatments vary, and no two situations are exactly alike.
Always consult with your personal healthcare provider before making any decisions about your health or treatment plan.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Use it to train your immune system to attack the melanoma throughout your body. This is fantastic for people with metastatic disease. If you have anything on the surface, get this cream, train your immune system, attack the tumors. Today I want to tell you about one of the most powerful and interesting and easy forms of immunotherapy, one that you've probably never heard about. So this is specifically for you if you have melanoma, anything HPV related, anything with a surface expression. This is things that you can touch. They're on the surface of your body. Warts, actinic keratosis, melanoma spots, basal cell carcinoma. This is for you. And it doesn't have to be just there. If you have any surface accessible tumor material, this is for you. It's super powerful, super fast, and super easy. Stick with us. Hello and welcome to Elevating Cancer Treatment, where we explain the science and debunk myths to help you navigate your health journey. My background is a little different. Beyond educating about cancer, I'm actually designing new drugs that are defining the future of oncology. This direct hands-on experience offers me a very different perspective of how these cancer treatments work on the body, interact with the cancer cells, and cause side effects. And these are insights that I'm excited to share with you. If that sounds interesting, make sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and hit that notification bell so you never miss an update. And please share it if you find it useful. I'm Dr. Jay Chaplin. An important reminder, I'm a PhD, not an MD. The information in this video is education and it's not medical advice. Every cancer is unique and no general information applies to everyone. Please remember that. Always consult with your healthcare provider for guidance on your specific situation. And two quick things. First, as a thank you for being here, I've created a free resource, 10 things to elevate your chemo journey, which you can download from the link below. And second, by signing up, you'll also get updates on that innovative cancer treatment I'm working on. I'm confident it represents a significant advancement in immunotherapy. So please take a moment, download your free guide, and join us in shaping the future of cancer treatment. So most doctors and dermatologists especially really like things to be simple, easy, and straightforward, and they like to have control. When you come and you have a wart or a small flat spot, an actinic keratosis spot or some melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, they will probably want to either cut it out or freeze it. Because that way they know it's done and they don't have to rely on you to follow through on anything. It's just done. That is easy and it's not your best course of action. And here's why. In a previous episode, I talked about how certain procedures like cryoablation, radiofrequency ablation, and histotripsy were really valuable because they killed the tumor and they left it in place for your immune system to react to it. It's kind of like getting vaccinated. There's damage at the spot and tumor antigens stay there, and if your immune system can recognize them, then it forms immune memory, which is helpful for clearing out cancer anywhere in your body. This is a great thing. Similarly, if you have some sort of surface exposed spot, maybe it's an HPV wart, or maybe it's a melanoma spot, instead of getting it cut out, or instead of having it be frozen, ask for aldera cream. It contains an ingredient called Imiquamod. Imiquamod is something that I worked with back in graduate school. Emiquamod doesn't get very far into the skin. If you put it on, only about 20% of it gets absorbed and it only gets absorbed down a layer or two. But that's enough. Because what emiquamod does is it convinces your body that there is a massive viral infection at that spot. It triggers something called TLR7, toll-like receptor 7, which normally only happens with certain kinds of viral RNA. So your immune system goes haywire. You get redness, you get swelling, you get itching. Yes, it is unpleasant. But what happens? The combination of that reaction, you get release of interferons, and your immune system attacks that area. Normal skin recovers very quickly. There's nothing for your immune system to recognize there. But any altered cells, cancerous cells, or virally infected cells like the HPV and the HPV warts, those cells get killed off. And when your immune system recognizes those, it sees something different from normal, and there's inflammation, a danger signal, those two together give you a good, strong, robust immune response. That immune response isn't just in a place, it resolves itself and all those immune cells go elsewhere. They circulate throughout your entire body. If you have melanoma and you treat a melanoma spot on your hand, those immune cells go throughout your body. If they find another spot of melanoma, they begin attacking it. That attack then recruits more immune cells and you get this sustained cycle. So every single time you use aldera cream, this emiquamod containing cream, on a potentially cancerous or virally infected spot, you are effectively training your immune system to attack similar things. If you have melanoma recurrent, and it's in your lungs, it's in your liver, but one spot is on your skin, don't get rid of that. Use it to train your immune system to attack the melanoma throughout your body. This is fantastic for people with metastatic disease. If you have anything on the surface, get this cream, train your immune system, attack the tumors. This works really well by itself. It works even better with any sort of immune stimulating approach, whether that's the aspirin or apigenin approaches that we talked about, whether that's inducing fake fevers, that stacks well with this, or whether we're talking about regular immunotherapy. We did an entire episode on immunotherapy. This works really well with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Any of those stack well together. This is a fantastic opportunity to use the biology of the cancer against itself and vaccinate yourself against the cancer. Don't throw away this opportunity by taking the easy road and letting your dermatologist cut it out and throw it away. Use it for everything you can. Alright. Again, this is something that you have to do. You can get the cream, but you have to apply it, and you have to do it fairly religiously. It does not penetrate down well, so if you have a bigger wart or deeper lesion, it will take time. Studies have shown that applying it once a day, every day, until the lesion is completely gone is the way to go. And if you have something deeper, if you're more worried about it, let's say that you have some melanoma and you're worried that it might be invasive, you can also increase this by either microneedling the space before you put the cream on, that will get it another couple of layers further down. Or you can put the cream on, allow it to soak in, and then come back with a drop or two of DMSO and rub that in to get more of the drug in and a little deeper into the skin. You do have to be somewhat thoughtful about that though, and monitor the amount of inflammation. You want enough to get a good immune response triggered, but you don't want so much that you get a lot of redness flaking or irritation. So I'm including these two examples to show that the side effects can be very irritating, but the benefit can be large as well. Of course, this is going to depend on the particular area of skin. Some are more sensitive than others, and how much of these enhancers like microneedling, DMSO, or salicylic acid you use. You really have to be able to judge what the benefit versus the cost is for you in your particular situation. But that's something that you can manage for yourself. And again, think about what amount of short-term irritation is worth having a good immune response that keeps you persistently and permanently clear of future metastases and recurrence. Beyond these videos, if you need more personalized guidance or a deeper dive into specific treatments to have your treatment be as effective as possible, I offer one on one sessions and medical advocacy. You can find information on our website, which is linked down below. Again, if you found this video informative, please give it a thumbs up, click the notification bell, and subscribe to our channel for more science based cancer insights.