A Natural Cure for Cancer?: THE FUTURIST Interviews Dr …

When people come down with cancer, they submit to regimens of drugs and, if need be, harsh radiation treatments. But what if those patients could forego all of this and ward off their cancers with their own white blood cells? An experimental white-blood-cell-transfusion approach that Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj is developing might make that feasible.

Dr. Maharaj is a hematologist and oncologist at the South Florida Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant Institute, a cancer treatment center that applies stem-cell therapies to cancers that have not responded well to other treatments. He is working on taking white blood cells from healthy donors and fusing them into patients with cancer, so that the transfused cells can stimulate the patients immune systems and enable them to ward off the cancers on their own.

His concept has precedentsdoctors successfully treat some other types of infections by transfusing white blood cellsand the initial experimental results are promising. He will need more time, however, and much more funding before his treatment approach is ready. Dr. Maharaj described his research to Rick Docksai, associate editor for THE FUTURIST, in the following interview.

Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj (photo credit: BMSCTI.org)

THE FUTURIST: Strengthening the body to wage its own fight against cancer, instead of relying on drugs or radiation, is certainly an appealing idea. What first drew you to it?

Dipnarine Maharaj: We asked the question, why is that some people get cancer and others dont? The answer is that someone whos got cancer, their immune system is broken down. So if the people who didnt get cancer, their immune systems are not broken down, how can we fix the cancer patients immune systems? Im a stem-cell physician, and weve had this procedure for many years where we use a patients own stem cells or the stem cells of a donor to reform the patients own immune system. Thats what actually helps to cure the cancer.

THE FUTURIST: How does your new approach go about boosting the bodys immune cells? What mechanisms are involved?

Maharaj: To cure cancer, we really have to repair the immune system. What were trying to do is apply that same knowledge to treat patients with solid tumors. The method Im using, were taking cells of the immune system from the donors, and were transfusing those cells into patients who have cancers. It is essentially a white-blood-cell transplant.

THE FUTURIST: How early in the progression of cancer would a patient need to be for the treatment to work effectively?

Maharaj: Were still under the clinical trials. But the best way I could answer that question is that the smaller the amount of disease at the time that it is done, the better the chance of a positive outcome.

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