Volume 4 Issue 1 - Dr. Julian Kenyon

Originally published in Issue 1 2005 icon

Dr Kenyon can also be reached directly, via www.doveclinic.com

Telephone: 020 7486 5588 or 01962 718 000

I would like to hear from patients who have tried interferon and interleukin. My mum had her kidney out last year and they have just found two more tumours. The suggested best treatment is immunotherapy.

Your mother had kidney cancer and she clearly has a recurrence. We have some experience in this area. There are clinical trials with the use of interleukin tube, but particularly with dentritic cell therapy vaccines (see www.doveclinic.com research section) on kidney tumours and the results have been encouraging.

Generally speaking we use high dose intravenous Vitamin C in order to cause some tumour cell destruction, then obtain protein from the tumour from the urine following this treatment. Then a dentritic cell therapy vaccine is made specifically for the patient from this. As there are good conventional clinical trials recommending this approach, and as it doesn’t have a down side, unlike chemotherapy, then it’s definitely worth trying.

I would be much obliged for any information you can give me about how to heal cancer of the pancreas at the third stage. The patient is a 59 year old man. He has already lost 20 kilos in weight. The doctors operated recently but they did not extract the tumour as they said it was spread all over the pancreas. Do you think there is any possibility of healing?

Pancreatic cancer is a particularly distressing form of cancer and is often inoperable. Other approaches such as chemotherapy have some effect but median survival time is looked at in terms of a few months, therefore in my view it is best to go for something which is safe and does not have the side effects of conventional chemotherapy. Conventional chemotherapy usually involves the use Gemcitabine. There is a study comparing the results of Gemcitabine with Ukrain (a majus and thiotepa) which is a well tolerated chemotherapy approach.

The results show that Ukrain improved quality of life in patients suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer and significantly prolonged survival time in these patients compared to the use of Gemcitabine. This would be my choice.

Anecdotally, I have come across three patients who have done encouragingly well with pancreatic cancer, following a tumour killing approach such as the one suggested above (Ukrain), with a dendritic cell therapy vaccine.

I hope this answer gives some encouragement. This is not a condition that can be cured but it can be palliated in the way I suggest.

Can anyone advise if the new test, patented by DiagnoCure to detect prostate cancer is available anywhere in the UK?

You ask about a new diagnostic test for prostate cancer which looks at genes indicating the presence of PCA3G which, on the basis of recent clinical studies, appears to be diagnostic for prostate cancer and more accurate than the PSA blood test. This is a urine test and is complex as the genes in the cells of urine need to be amplified in order to be detected.

Because a PSA often gives significant false positives and false negative results, this particular test would appear to be an exciting new way forwards. I suspect it may well be adopted by many hospitals but will take several years to establish itself in the market place.

Do you have any information on brain tumours called "central neurocytomas"? I had one 95% resected last year and have a little residue left. All the information I can find seems to refer to malignant tumours and mine is/was apparently very low grade. Do you know of anything I can do to help shrink the residue of this low grade type?

Central neurocytoma is a rare tumour. It is low grade, but I would treat it with respect and try to do everything possible to stop it recurring.

There are studies on the use of various Isosflavones; these are vegetable derivatives of various sorts in the treatment of brain tumours. The use of an angiogenesis inhibitor to stop new blood vessel formation in any tumour mass is also important in brain tumours.

There has been some encouraging papers on the use of specific dendritic cell vaccines for recurrent advanced brain tumours. This would imply that these approaches would be useful in less serious conditions such as your own. I would advise you to look into this and try to get some treatment to stop it recurring.