Immune Pheresis: The Historic Subtractive Cancer Treatment
In the 2000s, a visionary clinician – M. Rigdon Lentz, MD – showed that cancer can be treated with unparalleled efficacy by depleting soluble TNF receptors (sTNF‑Rs) from patients' blood. Dr. Lentz's treatment, called Immune Pheresis, was capable of regressing even late-stage cancer.
Immune Pheresis was a purely subtractive monotherapy — no drugs or other adjunctive treatments were involved. The treatment was assessed in 100+ patients with 20+ solid-tumor cancer types, and was the subject of a clinical trial resulting in a CE Mark in 2008.
Immune Pheresis used a complex, lengthy, and invasive apheresis procedure — limiting its reach to a small number of patients who could travel to Dr. Lentz's clinic in Germany. Insights from Immune Pheresis inspired development of NaNots — the first therapeutic to clear sTNF‑Rs via simple injection, enabling a new globally-scalable treatment.
Immune Pheresis results: 60%
Overall Response Rate (ORR)
(typical new investigational drug
monotherapies have ORRs of ≤ 10%)
The data above for 5 tumor
types are extracted from a
data set of 20+ tumor types.
| Cancer Type | # Responses | Total N | Response % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breast | 20 | 27 | 74% |
| Lung | 6 | 13 | 46% |
| Ovarian | 3 | 4 | 75% |
| Prostate | 8 | 8 | 100% |
| Sarcomas / soft tissue | 6 | 7 | 86% |
All patients late-stage metastatic. Detailed summary & data available under NDA.
The data above for 5 tumor
types are extracted from a
data set of 20+ responding tumor types.NOTE: The above data for 5 tumor types is extracted from a data set of 20+ tumor types.The above data for 5 tumor types is extracted
from a data set of 20+ tumor types.
Dr. Lentz treats a cancer patient with Immune Pheresis (2014)Dr. Lentz treats a cancer patient with Immune Pheresis (2014)Dr. Lentz treats a cancer patient with Immune Pheresis (2014)
The Immune Pheresis device incorporated a pair of affinity columns, which captured sTNF‑Rs from patient plasma. The "cleaned" plasma – minus only these immune inhibitors – was then returned to patient circulation.
