It amazes me that this Physician is so ignorant regarding “Historical Norms”. The DCVax study compared patients from trials that were ongoing at the SAME TIME as the trial for DCVax, NOT OLDER STUDIES! Then he talks about Tumor Treating Fields; the study for Tumor Treating Fields had about 80% of it’s patients with a mutation called IDH. IDH is such a good prognostic factor (meaning that if you have this mutation you live much longer than those without it) that the WHO changed the definition of Glioblastoma to exclude tumors with IDH mutation. Further, the study for Tumor Treating Fields required the patient to wear the device more than 80% of the time the trial was ongoing. That means 19.2 hours out of every 24 hour day, for almost 2 years. In real life most patients cannot comply with that intense requirement. Plus, it costs $21,000/month and most insurance doesn’t cover it. Also, the DCVax trial had only 8% of it’s patients with the IDH mutation, meaning their patients had much less chance for survival than the 80% of those in the Tumor Treating Field study. Anyone who pays attention here will find, if you look, that most of the Physicians in the US making these claims about DCVax not being quite there yet will find most if not all of them have been paid or do work for Novocure, the company that makes the Tumor Treating Field head device. DCVax is a shot in the arm for several months and has no side effects. It will be the treatment that will change the course of Cancer Treatments from here on, and will work on all solid tumors. The Physician who invented it, Dr. Linda Liau, Chair of Neurosurgery at UCLA, is doing other studies combining DCVax with Keytruda and the survival with the combination is stunning; greater than 50% of the patients are alive at 24 months and still going. Lastly, the reason that DCVax compared to “Outside Comparators” was because everyone had their blood drawn and a vaccine made. So people who were taking Placebo were allowed to “cross over” and start getting their vaccine. So after progression everyone got the vaccine. The study was originally meant to compare Progression Free Survival (PFS), a common marker of Overall Survival (OS). Once patients Progress after Standard of Care treatments in Glioblastoma they historically have only about 7 months left to live. So the theory in Cancer studies has been that if the new treatment being trialed can prolong the time to Progression it would give an Overall Survival benefit. With DCVax what originally was thought to be Progression (It appeared in MRIs that the tumor had come back) was actually inflammation from the immune response, not the tumor coming back. But they didn’t understand this until later in the trial. They kept finding patients that they thought had Progressed where actually living much longer than expected. Of the 13% who survived until 5 years the majority were ones who had this False Progression. This means the patients with the strongest immune response, the ones with all that inflammation, had a huge amount of Killer T Cells cleaning up any remaining tumor cells that were left over after surgery, Chemo, and Radiation. They had no Placebo patients to compare Overall Survival to because they had all crossed over and got their vaccine. So they had to come up with an alternative way to compare Overall Survival and so found outside contemporary trials and used their Placebo patients as comparisons. This will receive FDA approval and more trials will not only confirm it’s efficacy but will show it works on all solid tumors. It will replace toxic Chemo and for sure will make wearing an electric helmet for 20 hours a day with a huge cost completely obsolete.
How do you know all this? Do you or someone you love have this horrible disease? Someone I love has been recently diagnosed and I am constantly looking for what’s being done beyond SOC.
I love your explanation, thank you for it, i was diagnosed with glioblastoma 4 months ago, the question is , when will it be approved? I think pharma companies are not happy with this treatment as it will be bad for their business,
Would have been nice to talk to the Primary Investigator and a developer of DCVax-L; Dr. Linda Liau, Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at UCLA to get her take on the treatment. She started investigating dendritic cell vaccines back in the late 90's.
It amazes me that this Physician is so ignorant regarding “Historical Norms”. The DCVax study compared patients from trials that were ongoing at the SAME TIME as the trial for DCVax, NOT OLDER STUDIES! Then he talks about Tumor Treating Fields; the study for Tumor Treating Fields had about 80% of it’s patients with a mutation called IDH. IDH is such a good prognostic factor (meaning that if you have this mutation you live much longer than those without it) that the WHO changed the definition of Glioblastoma to exclude tumors with IDH mutation. Further, the study for Tumor Treating Fields required the patient to wear the device more than 80% of the time the trial was ongoing. That means 19.2 hours out of every 24 hour day, for almost 2 years. In real life most patients cannot comply with that intense requirement. Plus, it costs $21,000/month and most insurance doesn’t cover it. Also, the DCVax trial had only 8% of it’s patients with the IDH mutation, meaning their patients had much less chance for survival than the 80% of those in the Tumor Treating Field study. Anyone who pays attention here will find, if you look, that most of the Physicians in the US making these claims about DCVax not being quite there yet will find most if not all of them have been paid or do work for Novocure, the company that makes the Tumor Treating Field head device. DCVax is a shot in the arm for several months and has no side effects. It will be the treatment that will change the course of Cancer Treatments from here on, and will work on all solid tumors. The Physician who invented it, Dr. Linda Liau, Chair of Neurosurgery at UCLA, is doing other studies combining DCVax with Keytruda and the survival with the combination is stunning; greater than 50% of the patients are alive at 24 months and still going. Lastly, the reason that DCVax compared to “Outside Comparators” was because everyone had their blood drawn and a vaccine made. So people who were taking Placebo were allowed to “cross over” and start getting their vaccine. So after progression everyone got the vaccine. The study was originally meant to compare Progression Free Survival (PFS), a common marker of Overall Survival (OS). Once patients Progress after Standard of Care treatments in Glioblastoma they historically have only about 7 months left to live. So the theory in Cancer studies has been that if the new treatment being trialed can prolong the time to Progression it would give an Overall Survival benefit. With DCVax what originally was thought to be Progression (It appeared in MRIs that the tumor had come back) was actually inflammation from the immune response, not the tumor coming back. But they didn’t understand this until later in the trial. They kept finding patients that they thought had Progressed where actually living much longer than expected. Of the 13% who survived until 5 years the majority were ones who had this False Progression. This means the patients with the strongest immune response, the ones with all that inflammation, had a huge amount of Killer T Cells cleaning up any remaining tumor cells that were left over after surgery, Chemo, and Radiation. They had no Placebo patients to compare Overall Survival to because they had all crossed over and got their vaccine. So they had to come up with an alternative way to compare Overall Survival and so found outside contemporary trials and used their Placebo patients as comparisons. This will receive FDA approval and more trials will not only confirm it’s efficacy but will show it works on all solid tumors. It will replace toxic Chemo and for sure will make wearing an electric helmet for 20 hours a day with a huge cost completely obsolete.
How do we get access to dcvax being from outside the USA?
How do you know all this? Do you or someone you love have this horrible disease? Someone I love has been recently diagnosed and I am constantly looking for what’s being done beyond SOC.
I love your explanation, thank you for it, i was diagnosed with glioblastoma 4 months ago, the question is , when will it be approved? I think pharma companies are not happy with this treatment as it will be bad for their business,
It’s a shame that Dr. Rivas didn’t disclose that he is compensated from novacure (the company that makes the electric scalp device)
Is this available?
Would have been nice to talk to the Primary Investigator and a developer of DCVax-L; Dr. Linda Liau, Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at UCLA to get her take on the treatment. She started investigating dendritic cell vaccines back in the late 90's.
Nice 👍
WGN could’ve found out that he was biased and compensated from novacure with a simple google search. Took me 4 minutes after watching the video!
Yes of cours cancer of Braine eating part of Braine in my mind