How does apheresis reveal hidden cancer cells?
The immune system produces immunocytes (white blood cells) that find and kill germs, and other foreign invaders. Some of these immunocytes can find and "eat" cancerous cells. Reveal's BioPACK™ helps your body's immunocytes to do two things: get better at finding cancer cells, and produce more of these immunocytes. Immunocytes are guided by chemical signals produced by cells, called cytokines. The Apheresis part of BioPACK™ helps, by helping your immunocytes find the cancer cells. Here's how:
Infected or damaged cells --including some cancer cells-- produce "Eat me!" cytokines that tell immunocytes to destroy them; healthy self-cells produce "Don't eat me!" cytokines. Nearly all solid cancers hide from the immune system by producing phony "Don't eat me!" cytokines. These phony cytokines are what Reveal calls "cloaking cytokines".
The Reveal BioPACK™ uses apheresis to remove cloaking cytokines from the patient's blood, and then return the blood to the patient. With the cloaking cytokines removed, immunocytes are able to better find cancer cells that had been hiding. While the biochemistry can be very complex, the idea is very simple.
This apheresis process is also called “Subtractive Therapy™”. Simply put, cytokines fabricated by cancers are removed. And more specifically, Subtractive Therapy™ is defined as the process of introducing an agent [sometimes called an “anti-agent”, or antigen] that is exactly or is sufficiently similar to the immune system resource targeted by a particular disease, to remove the molecules synthesized by the disease [cytokines]. In the Reveal BioPACK™, we immobilize these antigens inside the BioPACK™ so that these antigens are kept safely away from your body, and we bring the blood [plasma] that carries the cytokines to the antigen, instead of trying to bring the antigen to the cytokine. As an analogy, it is like a special sticky filter that is ONLY sticky to the targeted “bad” cytokines molecules. This also means we are a device instead of a drug, so there are many fewer things for the antigens to interact with, which significantly reduces the chances of any side-effects.
Infected or damaged cells --including some cancer cells-- produce "Eat me!" cytokines that tell immunocytes to destroy them; healthy self-cells produce "Don't eat me!" cytokines. Nearly all solid cancers hide from the immune system by producing phony "Don't eat me!" cytokines. These phony cytokines are what Reveal calls "cloaking cytokines".
The Reveal BioPACK™ uses apheresis to remove cloaking cytokines from the patient's blood, and then return the blood to the patient. With the cloaking cytokines removed, immunocytes are able to better find cancer cells that had been hiding. While the biochemistry can be very complex, the idea is very simple.
This apheresis process is also called “Subtractive Therapy™”. Simply put, cytokines fabricated by cancers are removed. And more specifically, Subtractive Therapy™ is defined as the process of introducing an agent [sometimes called an “anti-agent”, or antigen] that is exactly or is sufficiently similar to the immune system resource targeted by a particular disease, to remove the molecules synthesized by the disease [cytokines]. In the Reveal BioPACK™, we immobilize these antigens inside the BioPACK™ so that these antigens are kept safely away from your body, and we bring the blood [plasma] that carries the cytokines to the antigen, instead of trying to bring the antigen to the cytokine. As an analogy, it is like a special sticky filter that is ONLY sticky to the targeted “bad” cytokines molecules. This also means we are a device instead of a drug, so there are many fewer things for the antigens to interact with, which significantly reduces the chances of any side-effects.
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