Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
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CAR-T therapy, T Cells, Myeloma
How is CAR-T therapy, T cells and myeloma related? Or to phrase this question differently, myeloma patients need T cells in order to have CAR-T cell therapy. And if the MM patient’s T cells are exhausted, their CAR-T therapy won’t work very well.
Relapsed, refractory myeloma patients undergo cycle after cycle of different types of chemotherapy. This is how MM patients stay alive.
However, the studies linked below explain two important things about myeloma patients-
- First, all types of chemotherapy damage the patient’s immune system-
- Secondly, the more chemo the patient undergoes, the more damage they sustain-
- Lastly, survivors recover only partially-
Unfortunately, myeloma patients are at a disadvantage to begin with because:
- If you are a MM survivor, say at the age of 70 or older, your immune system may not be working fully to begin with.
- In addition, myeloma can cause the patient to be immunocompromised (before chemotherapy).
- Lastly, myeloma patients often undergo round after round of chemotherapy, often for years following their original diagnosis.
What non-conventional therapies can enhance a person’s immune system?
1. Nutrition-Based Approaches
- Probiotics and Fermented Foods: Enhance gut health, which is closely tied to immunity. Foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut are rich in probiotics.
- Medicinal Mushrooms: Varieties like reishi, shiitake, and maitake contain beta-glucans, which may enhance immune response.
- Herbal Supplements:
- Echinacea: Often used for preventing colds and infections.
- Elderberry: May help reduce the severity and duration of colds.
- Astragalus: Traditional Chinese herb thought to enhance immunity.
2. Mind-Body Practices
- Yoga and Tai Chi: Improve overall immune function by reducing stress and promoting circulation.
- Meditation: Regular mindfulness or guided meditation can lower stress hormones like cortisol, which negatively impact immune function.
- Breathing Exercises: Practices like the Wim Hof Method claim to stimulate the immune system through controlled breathing and cold exposure.
3. Energy-Based Therapies
- Acupuncture: May stimulate immune function and help with stress-related immune suppression.
- Reiki and Therapeutic Touch: These practices aim to balance the body’s energy fields, which some believe can enhance immune resilience.
4. Environmental and Physical Therapies
- Sauna Therapy: Exposure to high heat may stimulate the production of white blood cells.
- Cold Therapy (Cryotherapy): Controlled cold exposure could improve circulation and potentially boost immunity.
- Forest Bathing (Shinrin-Yoku): Spending time in nature has been shown to reduce stress and enhance immune markers like natural killer (NK) cell activity.
5. Adaptogens
- Herbs like ashwagandha, Rhodiola, and ginseng are believed to help the body adapt to stress and may indirectly support the immune system.
6. Biofeedback and Neurofeedback
- These techniques help you control physiological functions such as heart rate and stress levels, which can improve immune function over time.
7. Functional Medicine and Nutritional IV Therapy
- IV drips with vitamins like vitamin C, zinc, and glutathione are sometimes used to boost immune function, though evidence is mixed.
If you are a MM patient it is probable that your oncologist has already mentioned you having CAR-T cell therapy. If you are like most MM patients, you are trying to figure out the “sequencing” of the many therapy choices.
My view as a MM survivor and MM cancer coach is that CAR-T cell therapy is still in the early stages of development, as MM therapies go, and therefore is nowhere near perfected (as of 12/24). At the same time, the more conventional chemotherapy regimens you undergo, the weaker you immune system may become.
Regardless of your sequencing, I encourage you to undergo as many of the non-conventional immune enhancing therapies listed above as possible.
Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com with questions about multiple myeloma.
Hang in there,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Impact of T cell characteristics on CAR-T cell therapy in hematological malignancies
Abstract- Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has revolutionized the treatment paradigms for hematological malignancies. However, more than half of these patients cannot achieve sustainable tumor control, partially due to the inadequate potency of CAR-T cells in eradicating tumor cells.
T cells are crucial components of the anti-tumor immune response, and multiple intrinsic T-cell features significantly influence the outcomes of CAR-T cell therapy. Herein, we review progressing research on T-cell characteristics that impact the effectiveness of CAR-T cells, including:
- T-cell exhaustion,
- memory subsets,
- senescence,
- regulatory T-cells,
- the CD4+ to CD8+ T-cell ratio,
- metabolism,
- and the T-cell receptor repertoire.
With comprehensive insight into the biological processes underlying successful CAR-T cell therapy, we will further refine the applications of these novel therapeutic modalities, and enhance their efficacy and safety for patients…
Conclusion= Since its first clinical application in 2010, CAR-T cell therapy has shown notable success in the treatment of B-cell malignancies. However, achieving sustainable long-term response and remission remains a challenge, for resistance and disease relapse persist as common outcomes for many patients. T cells are the main adaptive immune cells against tumors and serve as the cellular basis for CAR-T cell therapy. Better exploration and characterization of T-cell properties, such as exhaustion, memory status, subsets, senescence, metabolism, and TCR repertoire will enable the dissection of CAR-T cell function in preclinical models and patients.
Importantly, recent developments in multi-omics profiling techniques, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and beyond, have greatly facilitated the exploration of the remarkable diversity of T-cell phenotypes and expanded our collective knowledge in CAR-T cell therapy. It is to be expected that our growing understanding of T-cell characteristics will allow the optimization of CAR-T cell manufacturing, the prediction of treatment responses, and the personalization of therapy.
Lingering effects of chemotherapy on mature T cells impair proliferation
“Engineered T-cell therapies (CAR-T cell therapies) have demonstrated impressive clinical responses in patients with hematologic malignancies. Despite this efficacy, many patients have a transient persistence of T cells, which can be correlated with transient clinical response.
Translational data on T cells from pediatric cancer patients shows a progressive decline in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) suitability with cumulative chemotherapy regardless of regimen. We investigated the effects of chemotherapy on surviving T cells in vitro, describing residual deficits unique to each agent including mitochondrial damage and metabolic alterations.
In the case of cyclophosphamide but not doxorubicin or cytarabine, these effects could be reversed with N-acetylcysteine. Specifically, we observed that surviving T cells could be stimulated, expanded, and transduced with CARs with preserved short-term cytolytic function but at far lower numbers and with residual metabolic deficits.
These data have implications for understanding the effects of chemotherapy on mature T cells later collected for adoptive cell therapy, as chemotherapy-exposed T cells may have lingering dysfunction that affects ex vivo adoptive cell therapy manufacturing techniques and, ultimately, clinical efficacy…”
After chemotherapy, immune system recovery may be slower than believed
‘…Predictably, the level of lymphocytes, which included various types of NK (or natural killer cells), T cells and B cells, dropped significantly after chemo, but the impact was short-term. Nine months later, most of the immune cells were up and running at pre-chemo levels…
When it came to certain types of NK, T and B cells, however, the researchers found chemo had a long-term effect. After nine months, B cells (important for creating antibodies) and CD4 T cells (also known as helper T cells) had only “partial recovery,” reaching only 69 percent and 60 percent of pre-chemo levels respectively, potentially leaving patients vulnerable.
In smokers, B cell recovery “was substantially and significantly impaired,” the researchers wrote, reaching only 51 percent of pre-chemo levels after 9 months…”
CAR-T therapy T cells and myeloma