"Learning the art (medical knowledge) takes a long time, and the time available for learning it in depth is short, the opportunity for studying it is fleeting, experiments are dangerous, and judgements on what is observed are difficult".
The above quotation is a free translation, and was thought up by Hippocrates of Kos (or Chios, 460 B.C. circa – Larissa, 377 B.C.).
This ancient aphorism is particularly appropriate for advanced medical techniques.
Search for a therapy for tumorous disorders by means of stimulating the immune system has always been considered to be the Holy Grail of modern medicine. In this field, major steps forward have been taken in the last few years.
Check point inhibitors (discovered by James Allison and Tasuku Honjo - who were recently awarded the Nobel prize) are marking a turning point in this direction.
In-body and extra-corporeal manipulation of specific cell populations enable authentic vaccines to be created.
This stimulating branch of medicine has seen my involvement over several years. C urrently I am putting in practise the principles on which the substances that are used in combination with cryosurgery to make tumorous antigens manifest are based, with a few groups (such as the Malaga Centre for Cryosurgery and Cryomedicine and the Rayak Hospital Cryoteam in Lebanon).
In addition, in the field of anti-tumour vaccines we have collaborated for years with CELICA, a company from Ljubljana (Slovenia), which is a leader in this field.
My Hippocrates group, which operates from the VID Medical Centre in Nova Gorica, is a reference point for transplants and organ donation using such highly advanced technologies, based on the preparation of vaccines obtained from a few selected populations of monocytes from the same patient, together with tumorous cells taken from the neoplasm itself. Later activated and compared in vitro, these monocyte populations form a vaccine that is injected in small repeated doses into the patient. This vaccine, which has been tested on patients suffering from hormone resistant prostate cancer (castration resistant), has demonstrated very significant efficacy (data in the process of publication, and not disclosable in detail until that time).
