Reprogramming the Immune System to Fight Cancer
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Dr. Matt Halpert, PhD, a cancer immunologist and the founder of Immunocine, to explore how dendritic cell immunotherapy is reprogramming the immune system to recognize and fight cancer.
Dr. Halpert shares his decade of cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine, explains why the dendritic cell functions as the general of the immune system army, and breaks down why traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation lack the specificity the immune system can offer.
Together, they discuss the concept of immune ignorance, why a single biomarker doesn't determine whether immunotherapy can work for a patient, and how correctly loading a patient's own tumor data into their dendritic cells can retrain the immune system to fight relapse and mutation.
Discover why cancer may be less a battle to fight and more a system to reeducate, and how patients today can access personalized immunotherapy without waiting years for it to reach mainstream care, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
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Dr. Matthew Halpert earned his doctorate at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), and then spent 10 years at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston as a Cancer Immunologist. During his research, Dr. Halpert published research in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, has been cited over 450 times, and became one of the leading experts regarding cutting-edge cancer immunotherapy.
Additionally, he has founded Diakonos Oncology, which is currently studying its revolutionary Dendritic Cell Treatment in multiple FDA clinical trials, including Glioblastoma which recently was awarded a “Fast Track” designation from the FDA (in 2023) and won a “Breakthrough in Cancer” award (in 2024). Other trials are on the same projectile, and there is optimism for future approvals.
In 2021, Dr. Halpert left Baylor College of Medicine to found the Immunocine Cancer Center, which leverages the Dendritic Cell Treatment currently being studied in US trials for patients that may benefit ‘today’ but are not eligible for one of the trials and do not have the time to wait.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-halpert-b4695174/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthalpertphd/
Learn more about Immunocine Cancer Center: https://immunocine.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
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Transcript
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We've known for decades that the dendritic cell runs the immune system. That's its job. It is the general of the immune system army. There are white blood cells that directly do the killing, like natural killer cells and T cells. But for those cells, for the T cell to do the killing, the question is, how does it know what to kill?
Haylie Pomroy: Welcome to the Hope and Help podcast, where we talk about science and science-based tools for fatigue and chronic illness. I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, a leading health and wellness expert, a PhD student in neuroimmunology, and a fierce advocate for those in need of a little bit of help and hope.
Today we're going to talk about cancer. Specifically, I want to talk about immunotherapies. I'm joined by the Dr. Matt Halpert.
Dr. Halpert, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on your show.
Haylie Pomroy: I love this. Dr. Halpert, you are a scientist in immunology and immunotherapy cancer scientist, correct?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Correct.
Haylie Pomroy: And your bio is amazing. You were at Baylor for 10 years doing cancer research. Was it specifically in this particular immunotherapy category of research?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. My entire time at Baylor College of Medicine as an academic researcher was specifically on this particular mechanism within the immune system, within the dendritic cells, which I know we'll get to, and how it could be applied to reprogram an immune system to target and fight cancer.
Haylie Pomroy: That's a lot. That's exciting research. But we're hearing so much about the term immunotherapy. Specifically, you mentioned the word dendritic cell. Help me understand, like, we know we have an immune system; I'm going to take it down a notch here for myself, and our immune system responds to both negative and positive impacts. Are there different types of immune cells that have a response specifically to cancer?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes, absolutely. And some of these specialized cells within this compartment, this system, are empowered and designed to eliminate either infected or mutated cells. Our body's able to see cells that are wrong, that are doing the wrong thing. And so that would include natural killer cells, that would include CD8 killer T cells, that would include CD4 helper T cells, and we can go through various nomenclatures, right, there's a lot. But yes, there are specific cells whose job it is to see a cell that is either malfunctioning due to a virus or malfunctioning due to an oncogenic mutation and eliminate it before it becomes a problem, if it's working correctly.
Haylie Pomroy: That's what our immune system is supposed to do. In cancer specifically, there are a lot of people out there that have had a diagnosis, a recurrence, a new diagnosis. What is immunotherapy, and how is that different than maybe chemotherapy or radiation therapy?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sure. And that's a great question. I'm going to stay high level on this.
Haylie Pomroy: Please, yeah.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunotherapy is essentially going to be anything that's focus is on educating and or activating the patient's own immune system to fight. That can be a cell therapy that Immunocine does, it could be a drug, but anything that the goal is to get your immune system fighting is going to technically be immunotherapy. And there are many benefits to that personally and professionally. Obviously, we like the specificity of it. The immune system is able to be very specific in what it targets and what it eliminates. And so in this way, you not only have a good shot of complete response, but less collateral damage.
Haylie Pomroy: Less collateral damage. How does that compare to taking a chemotherapeutic or taking a radiation treatment?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Transitioning into some standard-of-care radiation is a good example of a very blunt tool. And not to say that there's no benefit to it, absolutely. But if you have a, let's say, a big mass, a ball of cancer cells, I mean, it is as simplistic as if you shoot a laser of radiation at that ball, you're going to kill a lot of those cells.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Obviously, or depending on the stage and type of cancer, they may try and purposefully get some collateral damage and circle around that mass and just try to kill that entire area of cells, trying to kill 100% of the mutated cells with, again, a laser of radiation. And depending on the size and time, that can be effective. But because it's not an educated treatment, technically, if you miss even one cell, you still have cancer in your body.
Haylie Pomroy: You can have that opportunity.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: That one cell can start replicating again, and it's back.
Haylie Pomroy: I always say the biggest, the most important thing with a cancer diagnosis is to educate yourself. And if you can, table or set aside fear, shock, trauma for a moment and just become educated in the nomenclature, in the options and the opportunities, too. Take me through again. I love that high-level explanation of a chemotherapeutic drug, because as we talk about immunotherapy and educating the immune system, sometimes maybe getting rid of the bulk of the cells and then educating the immune system might be right for that person. So sometimes it can all be in complement. But how does in general chemotherapeutics work in cancer?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And so there are different classes of chemotherapy. One, for example, is going to be the type of drug that slows down or inhibits cellular proliferation.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Cancers are typically defined or partly defined as fast-growing cells, cells that are proliferating. One becomes two, two becomes four, and this just picks up speed, and eventually it's going to cause a fatal issue. You can take this class of drug. It's going to interfere with those replication pathways, and you're going to slow down the cancer growth.
Now, you're also going to slow down all the other cells in your body from proliferating, which is why chemo like this has collateral damage. You look sicker, your hair falls out,
Haylie Pomroy: You have GI issues because
Dr. Matthew Halpert: You're blocking all right cellular proliferation. But because the cancer is purposefully moving faster, the hope and plan here is to have a bigger effect there and cause the cancer trouble that, again, there's no education, there's still not your body still has no idea there's a problem. But the hope is that this will cause a lot of the cancer to die off.
Haylie Pomroy: And in your research, you specifically were, I would say the word fascinated, just really inspired by immunotherapy specifically. I mean, you could have easily gone into cancer radiation, cancer chemotherapeutic drug development, but you went extensively into immunotherapy and specifically into dendritic cell immunotherapy, correct? Explain to me a little bit about what the dendritic cell does to cancer. And then I want to understand about what you do actually clinically for these patients. We're all learning here, guys. I'm taking notes.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I'll be honest. I actually did not go into this necessarily at first with a focus on cancer. My training is as an immunologist; that's what my doctorate's in, and we've known for decades that the dendritic cell runs the immune system. That's its job. It is the general of the immune system army. There are white blood cells that directly do the killing, like natural killer cells and T-cells. But for those cells, for the T-cell to do the killing, the question is: how does it know what to kill? Where does it get those marching orders from? And the answer is from the general, from the dendritic cell. The dendritic cell's job is to see a threat, whatever that threat is, the flu, cancer, digest it, understand it, figure it out, and then enforce promote the optimal and complete and I say complete immune response to eliminate that. And this is why people in the past have been interested in dendritic cell biology and can we use it to fight cancer? And long story short is decades and decades and decades of research through the mid to late 90’s and early noughts had led us to, we still are not using dendritic cells correctly because, in the lab, in the clinic, we're unable to get anything to work. And while this led a lot of money and research to move on, biology has not changed. Biology continues to say, no, dendritic cells are at the top, and they can do this.
Haylie Pomroy: And so you're using dendritic cell therapies for cancer care.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I went into the whole project thinking, what are we missing in the dendritic cell? We're missing a mechanism. And we found it. And this is almost 20 years ago now, but we did, we found it. And it's this amazingly powerful, large, important mechanistic complex within dendritic cells that everyone has missed. And that might sound a little arrogant, but that is what the data say. That is what all of our work has been on. That's what our science is on, our patents, our clinical trials is on this misstep within the dendritic cell. And so as an immunologist, you start working on that, and you quickly start to realize the implications are, oh my gosh, with this, we can truly physiologically reprogram a patient's immune system to attack any infected or mutated cell in the body. And when you realize that, cancer becomes the next logical step as to could it work there?
Haylie Pomroy: Wow. That's fascinating. Science is amazing because it, it always seems to revert back to learning from the body. If we can learn from what the body was doing right and reprogram a body that's gotten off of its path to being healthy,, we can get it back, then the body can rewrite itself. That's amazing to me from an immune perspective.
You started a company called Immunocine; tell me a little bit about that business.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yep. Going forward from my previous story, almost with the academic research and all the publishing and all the stuff that goes with that is what I'd call a normal academic route. But there are some scientific discoveries that are critical. They can't fall. And this happens all the time in science. Scientists are not necessarily great. Marketers are not necessarily great at fundraising. And if you don't have the bandwidth or the abilities, a really good scientific finding can disappear for a while.
And that's happened. That could not happen here. This is one of those things that are critically important. And to be honest with you, again, speaking only as a scientist here, should be a ubiquitous part of any cancer patient's treatment. Simply should.
Haylie Pomroy: Immunotherapy or dendritic.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: This immunotherapy. Not just in general, but this immunotherapy. And so we're moving it forward. We know it's important. We know that to get the right recognition and validation, we're going to have to go down the normal regulatory pathway in the U.S. This does mean clinical trials, and we're doing that.
Haylie Pomroy: And you have a lot of trials going on. Where?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We have several clinical trials. Some are complete. Some are ongoing. Some are going to open. These are at places like Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson, UT Health Houston, Cooper Hospital. Several more sites are coming on board: Indiana University, Arizona, UAB. And we're continually bringing on even some heavy hitters at this point. And so we're doing those clinical trials. And if a cancer patient is eligible for one of those trials and they contact Immunocene, the first thing we'll do is route them to the clinical trial coordinator to see if they might be eligible there. But by design—
Haylie Pomroy: What if they're not? What if they're not eligible?
Exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Because we've had a lot of people that aren't eligible.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Exactly. And so here I am sitting in the Texas Medical Center knowing that we have unlocked something big here that, without any crazy synthetic drugs or toxins or anything, with basically just your own tumor sample, your own dendritic cells, we can correctly reprogram your immune system to fight. And we've got cancer patients who are coming up to me and saying, I understand the science. I looked into it. I get it. Why wouldn't I want to add this to my fight? And I would say, you do. Absolutely. There is no good argument to not do it. And they'd say, great. All right. Well, put me in the glioblastoma clinical trial. Well, you don't have glioblastoma. You have ovarian. You have—
Haylie Pomroy: Breast cancer, whatever.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: You have something else.
Haylie Pomroy: We had a client that had breast cancer that couldn't get into one of the trials. And your clinic is also in Cancun, Mexico.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I got fed up with telling people, sorry, we can't help you. And that started to affect me almost from an ethical point of view. Like, what are we doing here? Sure. Any person could be a quack and a scam artist, but I'm not. And the science is validated. And it's why can this not be available today to patients who need this and could benefit from it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right now. They don't have years to wait.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And Immunocine was not formed overnight. A lot of years of scouting and trying to find the right group, the right spot. If we're going to do this, you can't cut corners. And it needs to be done with the same legal, ethical, and integrity standards we have in the trials. And that took a little bit of time to find. But yes, I did find that in Cancun, Mexico, with a group of scientists, with an ISO seven certified positive pressure cleanroom lab and an oncology team, a radiology team, and this entire immunoscene was built on really this foundational technology that can help a lot of people. And then on the notion of we're going to do this top-of-the-line, correct. We're not cutting corners in obvious ways, and we're not cutting corners in non-obvious ways. We're not doing that. And so that's what Immunocine is: a way to correctly help patients today that can't get into the trials.
Haylie Pomroy: You have some trials that have been fast-tracked to the FDA. You've got a lot of trials both in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma that are happening in the States. And you also have a direct line for patients to receive treatment that are currently have a diagnosis that can travel to to Cancun. How long are they in clinic in Cancun when they have the treatment? First, give me that time period just so I can wrap my head around it. Then I'm going to walk through what that looks like.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sure. Provided right. The patient goes through a complimentary medical review. The team says you look like a good candidate.
Haylie Pomroy: How do they get a hold of you?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: There's a number of ways. There's our website, immunocine.com. Lots of good information there, as well as a submission form. And we're very responsive.
I'm going to just put that out there. If you fill that out, you will be contacted most likely that day by one of our patient coordinators to get started.
Haylie Pomroy: And to see if it's a right fit. And I will have a question that I'm going to trump what I just asked you for a second. And that is this really quick is there's a lot of cancer treatment centers that are talking about immunotherapy. But we have people that are told either immunotherapy is not right for their body or that particular kind of cancer. Do you guys help people navigate or vet with this dendritic cell therapy if it's right for that particular case?
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Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. There are a couple responses to that. And yes, if we do a review of your latest blood work, your latest oncology summary, and your latest scans, and we do not think this is a good fit for you, either due to a safety concern or, if we're just being honest, we maybe don't think it's going to be effective for one reason or another. We will tell you that. We're not going to waste your time and your money and just put our head in the sand. We don't operate that way.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. Patients can be told immunotherapy may not be good for their cancer. And let's clarify that. Right now, mainstream medicine, standard of care, there are only a couple of types of cancer immunotherapy. The most predominant are called checkpoint inhibitors. But these are drugs. They target a single antigen, a single target, either on the cancer or on the immune cell. If we look at the cancer and we see that marker there, the thinking is, hey, this drug may bind to that marker and help.
Haylie Pomroy: But that doesn't really activate the immune system, does it?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It does not educate, for sure. And if you're one of the patients where you're lucky enough that your immune system is already trying to fight. This can be an effective boost. But here's the thing. To look at the patient's tumor, not see that marker, and then say, "So immunotherapy won't work for you.” Is a gross oversimplification and kind of an exaggeration. People will ask me, well my doctor, we looked at the cancer, and it didn't have those checkpoints. The drugs won't work. Immunotherapy won't work. How is this different? And I have to back up; we've got to back up.
Haylie Pomroy: We've got to start with the immunology 101.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: This is not a drug. This is essentially a living, adaptable therapy personalized to you. And so we're going to take —I could care less if that marker's there. That's not the point. We're not targeting it. We're going to take your tumor sample.
Haylie Pomroy: They go through a surgery process where they extract a sample of the cancer tumor.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. That's critical. And that usually can be accomplished by an outpatient biopsy. But we do need a sample of the patient's cancer, and we do need it in a certain way, but we need that because—
Haylie Pomroy: And I've seen you work with many medical institutions. We just recently had someone that was at Dana-Farber. We talked to one of your patients that was out of, was it UT or Texas? And you work with their oncologist to obtain a sample of the cancer mass, correct?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We can do that. But we also routinely collect samples in Cancun. And yes, we, in the procedure room of an internationally certified private hospital with our interventional radiologist or other qualified doctor, depending on where the tumor is. No, we can, we can handle that at Immunocine as well.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it. OK. I'm fascinated. I'm glad that you told me that because the cases that I've seen that I've been involved in, their holistic wellness and their nutrition and getting them healthy for you and healthy post. These individuals usually their oncologist at UCLA or wherever they're at will provide that sample for you.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sometimes it's just easier that way, especially if the patient has something quickly coming up. But most of our patients, we do the biopsies ourselves in Cancun. But we're going to take that tumor sample to the lab. We're going to break it down to its entire antigenic components, its entire genetic signature, which encodes what that cancer is and/or could be, its entire protein library. We're not cherry-picking. This isn't some specific peptide we picked, or it's not about which receptors on it. It does for breast cancer: is it HER2, ER-positive, PR-positive? The immune system isn't targeting hormone receptors anyway.
It's kind of irrelevant in that sense. And so when we take that cancer information and properly load it into your dendritic cells, this unique way, we give all that education needed.
Haylie Pomroy: We take the dendritic cells from the blood. Or you take the blood and you pull out the dendritic cells, and then you load those with the data, the information from the cancer tumor. We take your immune system, the cancer that's manifesting in your body and you create what with that?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I like that you use the term data there. That is a good way to probably think about it. And not that this analogy really makes—
Haylie Pomroy: But cancer has a lot of data.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It does. But here's the thing. It's like, this is going to be a bad analogy, but let's say I'm, I'm dating myself here, I guess. But let's say you have a collection of CDs or DVDs, some sort of data. We can go back to VHS for sure. You got cassettes. There's the data. And if we pretend every different disc is a different cancer, a different patient, that's fine. If you take that disc over to your computer and you keep shoving it on the side or underneath or on the back or all over the place, everywhere that it doesn't go. And then the data is not read. What we've done in the past to say, oh, the computer doesn't work. No, the problem is not with the computer. The problem is you never gave it the data in the correct way in the first place. We can call it dumb luck or serendipitous or whatever. We found the CD drive, we opened it, we put the disc in, and all of a sudden everything changes. The computer comes to life. It knows what to do. It's actually perfectly capable. Why no one found that before? I don't know. But when we found that, and the more we study and realize, oh my gosh, has anyone actually ever used this thing correctly? And the answer is no. That's what we're doing. And so, okay, I didn't tell you anything about what data was on that CD. I didn't tell you about where it came from in the room. I didn't tell you about how old it is.
Because quite frankly, I'm not sure any of that matters if you get it into the system correctly. Get the data, put it in. Don't tell me immunotherapy can't work. You've got to use it correctly.
Haylie Pomroy: If a person's had a cancer diagnosis, is it better to talk to you guys before they go through all maybe of the standard care so that you can be part of the decision tree, the decision making that so you can give data? Because unfortunately, I feel like the people that I've sent down to they're on their second or third recurrence. In the ideal situation, is it you've got a cancer diagnosis, let's look at all the options. Is that the ideal?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely. And we have a number of candidates that will send us their information. And if it is best for them to, let's say, come to Cancun, let us start; let us get a biopsy; let us get that tumor information, let us get that data that we need. We're going to go ahead and put it in our data room, and we're going to preserve it. We might then tell the patient it is in your best interest for a true long-term success story to now go do your standard of care. The doctor said, if you do this six weeks of chemo radiation, that right there can put you in a much better spot of actually getting to complete remission. And then after that, come back to us, we'll give you the immune education to clean up all the leftover cells, the ones we can't see, and fight against relapse.
Haylie Pomroy: I love an ideal scenario medically. I always try to set out a protocol for progress, which is an ideal scenario in medicine. I had a case that I had actually sent to you, that spoke with you, you guys spent tons of time speaking with them. They got into a trial, was not using your dendritic cells, was using a different kind of immunotherapy at Duke; it was breast cancer, ended up having a recurrence at year five, and then revisited you guys, and has just received treatment down there. I mean, my dream, right, is maybe that that would have been the first line. I love that you guys have been with zero investment that she made to you; you guys have basically been a line of education to her for five years. Isn't that crazy? I was just thinking about that the other day, and patiently waited as the results came back from all the trials that you guys are in the middle of, and had enough data for her to feel like that was the right decision at the right time.
That just doesn't happen in medicine. People are like, look, if you're not going to see me as a patient, go away. I just wanted to mention that. I never have really gotten the opportunity to just kind of thank you for supporting her in making that decision to go to Duke, supporting her from coming back and seeing you with zero judgment. I mean, zero. You guys have been amazing to her, and she's now successfully had incredible treatment with you.
Tell me a little bit about, so you always say, I love this, that cancer can be viewed as an immunological disorder. We think sometimes of cancer as like this villain within our body, and we need to fight it, but actually the immune system needs to fight it. Do you call this kind of a dendritic vaccine, or what is the term that you use in the therapy that you use?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Now, there's a lot of underlying causes to the mutation in the first place that leads to cancer. And obviously, it's a whole different platform to talk about, is why is this cell, all cells are going to replicate.
Haylie Pomroy: But it doesn't, I mean, it matters, but really something's got to fight it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Right, exactly. Kind of irrelevant to what started it. Who cares now? It needs to be eliminated, and the immune system is supposed to do that. That's its job. Your circulatory system does not fight cancer. Your renal system is not there to fight cancer. Your immune system is. And so why it has failed here, why it does not recognize it, I don't know. That is an active area of research globally, but it has. And so, yes, I routinely say this is immune ignorance. Your immune system's naive. It's not that it can't fight; it doesn't know it's supposed to.
Haylie Pomroy: This therapy is a way to educate the immune system so that it can do what it's designed to do.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. It is fixing a biological mistake with biology.
Haylie Pomroy: I have seen, because of that one case that I was talking about, how much has evolved in Immunocine in the last five years. Where is your hope, where is your dream to see this therapy five years from now?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine has grown very fast.
Haylie Pomroy: I wish that it hadn't, because it would mean cancer was done. But thank God you're doing what you're doing, because I've seen so many people do well.
I mean, I appreciate that. And I'm so glad that it's grown, because that means you're helping so many people. But what's the hope going forward?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: To be clear, we don't cure everyone. It's not magic. I mean, we don't want to mislead anyone. It's a good immune response. It's robust. It's natural. And if you get that going, if you get your own body working correctly instead of kind of against you, you have very good outcomes. So, yes, we're growing kind of rapidly at this point.
Haylie Pomroy: And you have a lot of amazing stories on your website, too.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes, absolutely. And I encourage everyone to go visit and see those very real stories are very touching. The goal for this therapy is, again, this should be a ubiquitous part of all cancer treatment, regardless of if you're going to do radiation or surgery or chemo or a hormone blocker. Let's say you're doing a hormone blocker. OK, great. You've blocked the fuel or a fuel that is feeding cancer growth. What have you done to actually now go on the offensive?
Haylie Pomroy: It sounds so logical.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And well, anytime you understand biology more, it always seems like it's so obvious. Why didn't we see it before? And you change your diet. Great.
I'm not going to tell you that a diet doesn't make a difference to the rate of cancer growth. I'm still going to ask: what have you done to go on the offensive? And your choices are: they can be very harsh toxins and poisons, or it can be educate your immune system.
Haylie Pomroy: With the cancer you had. That's amazing.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It's not an off the shelf. It's going to have to be personalized. But we can do that now. And so get that going. And I'm not going to tell you not. It might be in your best interest to stack another therapy. One of the benefits of this is it doesn't remove any options for you. You still want to do X, Y or Z. You can. This doesn't change that. It changes it as much as if you had the flu. I mean, it's like that. People have asked, will it affect my fertility? Well, no. With the flu? I mean, you need to think about it that way, because that's what we're doing. We're tapping into—
Haylie Pomroy: Rebalancing the immune system
Dr. Matthew Halpert: … of immune response. And so we do want to push it through and get it widespread and all cancers in mainstream medicine. If you ask about Immunocine in particular, I'm going to say echoing the story you gave before, while I know who you're talking about, your friend, and absolutely no judgment. We gave her tons of hours. We educated. We wanted to make sure she understood what this was and why we're doing it.
Haylie Pomroy: You gave her questions to ask her doctor at Duke.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely. But I will tell you, we do that for everyone.
Haylie Pomroy: I know.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And what I've learned, and this is kind of sad to say, but what I've learned is that sort of compassion and honesty and education and just time investment is somewhat unique. And so not only do we have this specialized treatment, but the way we go about practicing medicine and treating patients is, we're being told by a lot of patients, it's very breath of fresh air kind of response. A lot of patients have even told me, even if I lose this fight, you all have changed everything. You have made this a manageable time in my life. And the more I hear that, the more I realize that if we stay on this path and true to our foundations, Immunocine is probably going to grow much bigger than I originally thought.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I'll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now back to our show.
I would imagine so. First of all, it's making a tremendous impact. But also, I think it's going to change the trajectory of cancer care, period. Because whether it's a standalone treatment or it's a conjunctive therapy, if we don't re-educate our immune system, we're just sitting and waiting and hoping that maybe the one identified, possibly like estrogen receptor positive. Maybe we do an estrogen blocker. Maybe that helps one identified fuel, for this particular cancer. But the thing is, the body's not that reductionistic. One thing doesn't cause it. It's a disharmony within the system. And if we don't retrain the system, another disharmony is going to come down the road. That's the biggest piece.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I think people often are surprised to learn cancer, well, they are, and they aren't. Cancer mutates. Well, what does that mean now? And at times, I'm very impressed with things like a virus or cancer. And so, cancer, if a chemotherapy or a hormone blocker, let's say something like that is working. And then suddenly, it just seems like it'll stop. It stops working. It's not working anymore. Well, why? Well, there's a couple of reasons. But one is the cancer may have actually learned what is being targeted and has now decided, oh, well, then I'm just going to stop presenting that. I'm going to get rid of it.
Haylie Pomroy: And also, sometimes those things can just annihilate the immune system. And if we don't do something to rebuild it or retrain it or re-educate it in the process, I mean, it's like on the basic level of doing a broad-spectrum antibiotic and not re-inoculating the gut. If we don't do something to restore the host or retrain the host, then we're really putting ourselves at a tremendous risk. I really appreciate just your company's openness to have this discussion. It is cutting-edge science and research, obviously, happening in the United States. But the fact that people can actually access care in real time, to me, is, on a personal level, the most important. How do they get ahold of you one more time?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine.com is our website.
Haylie Pomroy: And is there something that they fill out?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. There's a very simple-to-fill-out form there.
We're not asking a ton of questions at that time. In fact, we talked about should we just put our whole submission form here. And the reality is we don't want to do that until we've had a chance to talk to you. And so if you fill out this easy form, basically just give us some contact info, someone on our team will contact you shortly. We'll go over background of who we are, what we're doing, why this might be helpful. And only then, once you have some decent better understanding and first-line questions answered, will we send you to get some more information. You can also contact us, of course, on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn.
Haylie Pomroy: How do you spell it again?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine.com
Haylie Pomroy: Let me ask you this last question. If a person's recently had a diagnosis, I'm a huge advocate for knowledge. Sometimes there's analysis paralysis. There's so much data. Your best friend, the people at your church want to give you all kinds of information. Is it best to gather everything and then talk to you, or to begin the conversation early?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It is helpful if you have some things ready to go, it will speed up the review. You can contact us with nothing. We've had people contact us, and they haven't even officially been diagnosed yet. And we're happy to talk to anyone. That's who we are. But if we want to move forward to, are you a good candidate for this?
Haylie Pomroy: Back to data.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We're going to need some data.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love that. You know what? I totally baited you. And you're just amazing. Because you're a scientist first. That has a heart that wants to help people. But the fact that you just said get data, get information, because we want to make sure we can help you, as opposed to, of course, come down here and I'll give you a magical shot. I know you don't. But there are so many people that do. And I don't like to see it at any time, but especially with individuals that are dealing with a cancer diagnosis. I just want to thank you for being a brilliant scientist, for pushing immunotherapy and cancer for you're so well respected in that space. But then also for being really, really ethical in treating patients.
I've had the privilege of seeing you at different conferences and getting to meet so many of the patients that have been treated that have a longevity of remission or slowing of progression, sorry, and their stories are just so touching to me. I want this available to anybody and everybody. Please keep pushing the research. I know that it requires a lot of time, energy, effort, and funding. But thank you also for treating patients today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you. I mean, thank you for helping us and again, having us on your show.
Haylie Pomroy: We want to get everybody access. People need options.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: They do. And as you pointed out, I'm a scientist. They don't teach you marketing in graduate school. That's at least not for an immunologist. And so we've been very focused on the science and the medicine and the diagnostics and all the stuff that to me...
Haylie Pomroy: But people can't want to help talking to you after they meet your patients, after they meet the patients that come to your clinic. I mean like I said, when we had an opportunity to talk and ask and talk to people that maybe found you in very interesting ways, we had a connection through a couple of different medical facilities and doctors and clinics. But people are searching. And I do love that information is getting out there more readily because so many people, whether you're getting treated in Kansas or Texas or Oklahoma or New York. There is a wealth of information available now, but you've got to get good care, really good care. There's such a difference in cancer outcomes with people that get good care.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely.
Haylie Pomroy: All right. Go check out the website, guys. There's tons of data and information. And when you have some data to share with Dr. Matt and his team, reach out so that you can see if immunotherapy, no matter what anybody says, is an option for your body to get retrained into fighting cancer. I love that.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you.
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Dr. Matt Halpert, PhD, a cancer immunologist and the founder of Immunocine, to explore how dendritic cell immunotherapy is reprogramming the immune system to recognize and fight cancer.
Dr. Halpert shares his decade of cancer research at Baylor College of Medicine, explains why the dendritic cell functions as the general of the immune system army, and breaks down why traditional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation lack the specificity the immune system can offer.
Together, they discuss the concept of immune ignorance, why a single biomarker doesn't determine whether immunotherapy can work for a patient, and how correctly loading a patient's own tumor data into their dendritic cells can retrain the immune system to fight relapse and mutation.
Discover why cancer may be less a battle to fight and more a system to reeducate, and how patients today can access personalized immunotherapy without waiting years for it to reach mainstream care, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast
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Dr. Matthew Halpert earned his doctorate at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), and then spent 10 years at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston as a Cancer Immunologist. During his research, Dr. Halpert published research in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, has been cited over 450 times, and became one of the leading experts regarding cutting-edge cancer immunotherapy.
Additionally, he has founded Diakonos Oncology, which is currently studying its revolutionary Dendritic Cell Treatment in multiple FDA clinical trials, including Glioblastoma which recently was awarded a “Fast Track” designation from the FDA (in 2023) and won a “Breakthrough in Cancer” award (in 2024). Other trials are on the same projectile, and there is optimism for future approvals.
In 2021, Dr. Halpert left Baylor College of Medicine to found the Immunocine Cancer Center, which leverages the Dendritic Cell Treatment currently being studied in US trials for patients that may benefit ‘today’ but are not eligible for one of the trials and do not have the time to wait.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-halpert-b4695174/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthalpertphd/
Learn more about Immunocine Cancer Center: https://immunocine.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
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Transcript
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We've known for decades that the dendritic cell runs the immune system. That's its job. It is the general of the immune system army. There are white blood cells that directly do the killing, like natural killer cells and T cells. But for those cells, for the T cell to do the killing, the question is, how does it know what to kill?
Haylie Pomroy: Welcome to the Hope and Help podcast, where we talk about science and science-based tools for fatigue and chronic illness. I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, a leading health and wellness expert, a PhD student in neuroimmunology, and a fierce advocate for those in need of a little bit of help and hope.
Today we're going to talk about cancer. Specifically, I want to talk about immunotherapies. I'm joined by the Dr. Matt Halpert.
Dr. Halpert, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on your show.
Haylie Pomroy: I love this. Dr. Halpert, you are a scientist in immunology and immunotherapy cancer scientist, correct?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Correct.
Haylie Pomroy: And your bio is amazing. You were at Baylor for 10 years doing cancer research. Was it specifically in this particular immunotherapy category of research?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. My entire time at Baylor College of Medicine as an academic researcher was specifically on this particular mechanism within the immune system, within the dendritic cells, which I know we'll get to, and how it could be applied to reprogram an immune system to target and fight cancer.
Haylie Pomroy: That's a lot. That's exciting research. But we're hearing so much about the term immunotherapy. Specifically, you mentioned the word dendritic cell. Help me understand, like, we know we have an immune system; I'm going to take it down a notch here for myself, and our immune system responds to both negative and positive impacts. Are there different types of immune cells that have a response specifically to cancer?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes, absolutely. And some of these specialized cells within this compartment, this system, are empowered and designed to eliminate either infected or mutated cells. Our body's able to see cells that are wrong, that are doing the wrong thing. And so that would include natural killer cells, that would include CD8 killer T cells, that would include CD4 helper T cells, and we can go through various nomenclatures, right, there's a lot. But yes, there are specific cells whose job it is to see a cell that is either malfunctioning due to a virus or malfunctioning due to an oncogenic mutation and eliminate it before it becomes a problem, if it's working correctly.
Haylie Pomroy: That's what our immune system is supposed to do. In cancer specifically, there are a lot of people out there that have had a diagnosis, a recurrence, a new diagnosis. What is immunotherapy, and how is that different than maybe chemotherapy or radiation therapy?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sure. And that's a great question. I'm going to stay high level on this.
Haylie Pomroy: Please, yeah.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunotherapy is essentially going to be anything that's focus is on educating and or activating the patient's own immune system to fight. That can be a cell therapy that Immunocine does, it could be a drug, but anything that the goal is to get your immune system fighting is going to technically be immunotherapy. And there are many benefits to that personally and professionally. Obviously, we like the specificity of it. The immune system is able to be very specific in what it targets and what it eliminates. And so in this way, you not only have a good shot of complete response, but less collateral damage.
Haylie Pomroy: Less collateral damage. How does that compare to taking a chemotherapeutic or taking a radiation treatment?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Transitioning into some standard-of-care radiation is a good example of a very blunt tool. And not to say that there's no benefit to it, absolutely. But if you have a, let's say, a big mass, a ball of cancer cells, I mean, it is as simplistic as if you shoot a laser of radiation at that ball, you're going to kill a lot of those cells.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Obviously, or depending on the stage and type of cancer, they may try and purposefully get some collateral damage and circle around that mass and just try to kill that entire area of cells, trying to kill 100% of the mutated cells with, again, a laser of radiation. And depending on the size and time, that can be effective. But because it's not an educated treatment, technically, if you miss even one cell, you still have cancer in your body.
Haylie Pomroy: You can have that opportunity.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: That one cell can start replicating again, and it's back.
Haylie Pomroy: I always say the biggest, the most important thing with a cancer diagnosis is to educate yourself. And if you can, table or set aside fear, shock, trauma for a moment and just become educated in the nomenclature, in the options and the opportunities, too. Take me through again. I love that high-level explanation of a chemotherapeutic drug, because as we talk about immunotherapy and educating the immune system, sometimes maybe getting rid of the bulk of the cells and then educating the immune system might be right for that person. So sometimes it can all be in complement. But how does in general chemotherapeutics work in cancer?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And so there are different classes of chemotherapy. One, for example, is going to be the type of drug that slows down or inhibits cellular proliferation.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Cancers are typically defined or partly defined as fast-growing cells, cells that are proliferating. One becomes two, two becomes four, and this just picks up speed, and eventually it's going to cause a fatal issue. You can take this class of drug. It's going to interfere with those replication pathways, and you're going to slow down the cancer growth.
Now, you're also going to slow down all the other cells in your body from proliferating, which is why chemo like this has collateral damage. You look sicker, your hair falls out,
Haylie Pomroy: You have GI issues because
Dr. Matthew Halpert: You're blocking all right cellular proliferation. But because the cancer is purposefully moving faster, the hope and plan here is to have a bigger effect there and cause the cancer trouble that, again, there's no education, there's still not your body still has no idea there's a problem. But the hope is that this will cause a lot of the cancer to die off.
Haylie Pomroy: And in your research, you specifically were, I would say the word fascinated, just really inspired by immunotherapy specifically. I mean, you could have easily gone into cancer radiation, cancer chemotherapeutic drug development, but you went extensively into immunotherapy and specifically into dendritic cell immunotherapy, correct? Explain to me a little bit about what the dendritic cell does to cancer. And then I want to understand about what you do actually clinically for these patients. We're all learning here, guys. I'm taking notes.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I'll be honest. I actually did not go into this necessarily at first with a focus on cancer. My training is as an immunologist; that's what my doctorate's in, and we've known for decades that the dendritic cell runs the immune system. That's its job. It is the general of the immune system army. There are white blood cells that directly do the killing, like natural killer cells and T-cells. But for those cells, for the T-cell to do the killing, the question is: how does it know what to kill? Where does it get those marching orders from? And the answer is from the general, from the dendritic cell. The dendritic cell's job is to see a threat, whatever that threat is, the flu, cancer, digest it, understand it, figure it out, and then enforce promote the optimal and complete and I say complete immune response to eliminate that. And this is why people in the past have been interested in dendritic cell biology and can we use it to fight cancer? And long story short is decades and decades and decades of research through the mid to late 90’s and early noughts had led us to, we still are not using dendritic cells correctly because, in the lab, in the clinic, we're unable to get anything to work. And while this led a lot of money and research to move on, biology has not changed. Biology continues to say, no, dendritic cells are at the top, and they can do this.
Haylie Pomroy: And so you're using dendritic cell therapies for cancer care.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I went into the whole project thinking, what are we missing in the dendritic cell? We're missing a mechanism. And we found it. And this is almost 20 years ago now, but we did, we found it. And it's this amazingly powerful, large, important mechanistic complex within dendritic cells that everyone has missed. And that might sound a little arrogant, but that is what the data say. That is what all of our work has been on. That's what our science is on, our patents, our clinical trials is on this misstep within the dendritic cell. And so as an immunologist, you start working on that, and you quickly start to realize the implications are, oh my gosh, with this, we can truly physiologically reprogram a patient's immune system to attack any infected or mutated cell in the body. And when you realize that, cancer becomes the next logical step as to could it work there?
Haylie Pomroy: Wow. That's fascinating. Science is amazing because it, it always seems to revert back to learning from the body. If we can learn from what the body was doing right and reprogram a body that's gotten off of its path to being healthy,, we can get it back, then the body can rewrite itself. That's amazing to me from an immune perspective.
You started a company called Immunocine; tell me a little bit about that business.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yep. Going forward from my previous story, almost with the academic research and all the publishing and all the stuff that goes with that is what I'd call a normal academic route. But there are some scientific discoveries that are critical. They can't fall. And this happens all the time in science. Scientists are not necessarily great. Marketers are not necessarily great at fundraising. And if you don't have the bandwidth or the abilities, a really good scientific finding can disappear for a while.
And that's happened. That could not happen here. This is one of those things that are critically important. And to be honest with you, again, speaking only as a scientist here, should be a ubiquitous part of any cancer patient's treatment. Simply should.
Haylie Pomroy: Immunotherapy or dendritic.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: This immunotherapy. Not just in general, but this immunotherapy. And so we're moving it forward. We know it's important. We know that to get the right recognition and validation, we're going to have to go down the normal regulatory pathway in the U.S. This does mean clinical trials, and we're doing that.
Haylie Pomroy: And you have a lot of trials going on. Where?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We have several clinical trials. Some are complete. Some are ongoing. Some are going to open. These are at places like Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson, UT Health Houston, Cooper Hospital. Several more sites are coming on board: Indiana University, Arizona, UAB. And we're continually bringing on even some heavy hitters at this point. And so we're doing those clinical trials. And if a cancer patient is eligible for one of those trials and they contact Immunocene, the first thing we'll do is route them to the clinical trial coordinator to see if they might be eligible there. But by design—
Haylie Pomroy: What if they're not? What if they're not eligible?
Exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Because we've had a lot of people that aren't eligible.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Exactly. And so here I am sitting in the Texas Medical Center knowing that we have unlocked something big here that, without any crazy synthetic drugs or toxins or anything, with basically just your own tumor sample, your own dendritic cells, we can correctly reprogram your immune system to fight. And we've got cancer patients who are coming up to me and saying, I understand the science. I looked into it. I get it. Why wouldn't I want to add this to my fight? And I would say, you do. Absolutely. There is no good argument to not do it. And they'd say, great. All right. Well, put me in the glioblastoma clinical trial. Well, you don't have glioblastoma. You have ovarian. You have—
Haylie Pomroy: Breast cancer, whatever.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: You have something else.
Haylie Pomroy: We had a client that had breast cancer that couldn't get into one of the trials. And your clinic is also in Cancun, Mexico.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I got fed up with telling people, sorry, we can't help you. And that started to affect me almost from an ethical point of view. Like, what are we doing here? Sure. Any person could be a quack and a scam artist, but I'm not. And the science is validated. And it's why can this not be available today to patients who need this and could benefit from it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right now. They don't have years to wait.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And Immunocine was not formed overnight. A lot of years of scouting and trying to find the right group, the right spot. If we're going to do this, you can't cut corners. And it needs to be done with the same legal, ethical, and integrity standards we have in the trials. And that took a little bit of time to find. But yes, I did find that in Cancun, Mexico, with a group of scientists, with an ISO seven certified positive pressure cleanroom lab and an oncology team, a radiology team, and this entire immunoscene was built on really this foundational technology that can help a lot of people. And then on the notion of we're going to do this top-of-the-line, correct. We're not cutting corners in obvious ways, and we're not cutting corners in non-obvious ways. We're not doing that. And so that's what Immunocine is: a way to correctly help patients today that can't get into the trials.
Haylie Pomroy: You have some trials that have been fast-tracked to the FDA. You've got a lot of trials both in pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma that are happening in the States. And you also have a direct line for patients to receive treatment that are currently have a diagnosis that can travel to to Cancun. How long are they in clinic in Cancun when they have the treatment? First, give me that time period just so I can wrap my head around it. Then I'm going to walk through what that looks like.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sure. Provided right. The patient goes through a complimentary medical review. The team says you look like a good candidate.
Haylie Pomroy: How do they get a hold of you?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: There's a number of ways. There's our website, immunocine.com. Lots of good information there, as well as a submission form. And we're very responsive.
I'm going to just put that out there. If you fill that out, you will be contacted most likely that day by one of our patient coordinators to get started.
Haylie Pomroy: And to see if it's a right fit. And I will have a question that I'm going to trump what I just asked you for a second. And that is this really quick is there's a lot of cancer treatment centers that are talking about immunotherapy. But we have people that are told either immunotherapy is not right for their body or that particular kind of cancer. Do you guys help people navigate or vet with this dendritic cell therapy if it's right for that particular case?
Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. I've written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body's overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That's hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now back to our show.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. There are a couple responses to that. And yes, if we do a review of your latest blood work, your latest oncology summary, and your latest scans, and we do not think this is a good fit for you, either due to a safety concern or, if we're just being honest, we maybe don't think it's going to be effective for one reason or another. We will tell you that. We're not going to waste your time and your money and just put our head in the sand. We don't operate that way.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. Patients can be told immunotherapy may not be good for their cancer. And let's clarify that. Right now, mainstream medicine, standard of care, there are only a couple of types of cancer immunotherapy. The most predominant are called checkpoint inhibitors. But these are drugs. They target a single antigen, a single target, either on the cancer or on the immune cell. If we look at the cancer and we see that marker there, the thinking is, hey, this drug may bind to that marker and help.
Haylie Pomroy: But that doesn't really activate the immune system, does it?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It does not educate, for sure. And if you're one of the patients where you're lucky enough that your immune system is already trying to fight. This can be an effective boost. But here's the thing. To look at the patient's tumor, not see that marker, and then say, "So immunotherapy won't work for you.” Is a gross oversimplification and kind of an exaggeration. People will ask me, well my doctor, we looked at the cancer, and it didn't have those checkpoints. The drugs won't work. Immunotherapy won't work. How is this different? And I have to back up; we've got to back up.
Haylie Pomroy: We've got to start with the immunology 101.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: This is not a drug. This is essentially a living, adaptable therapy personalized to you. And so we're going to take —I could care less if that marker's there. That's not the point. We're not targeting it. We're going to take your tumor sample.
Haylie Pomroy: They go through a surgery process where they extract a sample of the cancer tumor.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. That's critical. And that usually can be accomplished by an outpatient biopsy. But we do need a sample of the patient's cancer, and we do need it in a certain way, but we need that because—
Haylie Pomroy: And I've seen you work with many medical institutions. We just recently had someone that was at Dana-Farber. We talked to one of your patients that was out of, was it UT or Texas? And you work with their oncologist to obtain a sample of the cancer mass, correct?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We can do that. But we also routinely collect samples in Cancun. And yes, we, in the procedure room of an internationally certified private hospital with our interventional radiologist or other qualified doctor, depending on where the tumor is. No, we can, we can handle that at Immunocine as well.
Haylie Pomroy: Got it. OK. I'm fascinated. I'm glad that you told me that because the cases that I've seen that I've been involved in, their holistic wellness and their nutrition and getting them healthy for you and healthy post. These individuals usually their oncologist at UCLA or wherever they're at will provide that sample for you.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Sometimes it's just easier that way, especially if the patient has something quickly coming up. But most of our patients, we do the biopsies ourselves in Cancun. But we're going to take that tumor sample to the lab. We're going to break it down to its entire antigenic components, its entire genetic signature, which encodes what that cancer is and/or could be, its entire protein library. We're not cherry-picking. This isn't some specific peptide we picked, or it's not about which receptors on it. It does for breast cancer: is it HER2, ER-positive, PR-positive? The immune system isn't targeting hormone receptors anyway.
It's kind of irrelevant in that sense. And so when we take that cancer information and properly load it into your dendritic cells, this unique way, we give all that education needed.
Haylie Pomroy: We take the dendritic cells from the blood. Or you take the blood and you pull out the dendritic cells, and then you load those with the data, the information from the cancer tumor. We take your immune system, the cancer that's manifesting in your body and you create what with that?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I like that you use the term data there. That is a good way to probably think about it. And not that this analogy really makes—
Haylie Pomroy: But cancer has a lot of data.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It does. But here's the thing. It's like, this is going to be a bad analogy, but let's say I'm, I'm dating myself here, I guess. But let's say you have a collection of CDs or DVDs, some sort of data. We can go back to VHS for sure. You got cassettes. There's the data. And if we pretend every different disc is a different cancer, a different patient, that's fine. If you take that disc over to your computer and you keep shoving it on the side or underneath or on the back or all over the place, everywhere that it doesn't go. And then the data is not read. What we've done in the past to say, oh, the computer doesn't work. No, the problem is not with the computer. The problem is you never gave it the data in the correct way in the first place. We can call it dumb luck or serendipitous or whatever. We found the CD drive, we opened it, we put the disc in, and all of a sudden everything changes. The computer comes to life. It knows what to do. It's actually perfectly capable. Why no one found that before? I don't know. But when we found that, and the more we study and realize, oh my gosh, has anyone actually ever used this thing correctly? And the answer is no. That's what we're doing. And so, okay, I didn't tell you anything about what data was on that CD. I didn't tell you about where it came from in the room. I didn't tell you about how old it is.
Because quite frankly, I'm not sure any of that matters if you get it into the system correctly. Get the data, put it in. Don't tell me immunotherapy can't work. You've got to use it correctly.
Haylie Pomroy: If a person's had a cancer diagnosis, is it better to talk to you guys before they go through all maybe of the standard care so that you can be part of the decision tree, the decision making that so you can give data? Because unfortunately, I feel like the people that I've sent down to they're on their second or third recurrence. In the ideal situation, is it you've got a cancer diagnosis, let's look at all the options. Is that the ideal?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely. And we have a number of candidates that will send us their information. And if it is best for them to, let's say, come to Cancun, let us start; let us get a biopsy; let us get that tumor information, let us get that data that we need. We're going to go ahead and put it in our data room, and we're going to preserve it. We might then tell the patient it is in your best interest for a true long-term success story to now go do your standard of care. The doctor said, if you do this six weeks of chemo radiation, that right there can put you in a much better spot of actually getting to complete remission. And then after that, come back to us, we'll give you the immune education to clean up all the leftover cells, the ones we can't see, and fight against relapse.
Haylie Pomroy: I love an ideal scenario medically. I always try to set out a protocol for progress, which is an ideal scenario in medicine. I had a case that I had actually sent to you, that spoke with you, you guys spent tons of time speaking with them. They got into a trial, was not using your dendritic cells, was using a different kind of immunotherapy at Duke; it was breast cancer, ended up having a recurrence at year five, and then revisited you guys, and has just received treatment down there. I mean, my dream, right, is maybe that that would have been the first line. I love that you guys have been with zero investment that she made to you; you guys have basically been a line of education to her for five years. Isn't that crazy? I was just thinking about that the other day, and patiently waited as the results came back from all the trials that you guys are in the middle of, and had enough data for her to feel like that was the right decision at the right time.
That just doesn't happen in medicine. People are like, look, if you're not going to see me as a patient, go away. I just wanted to mention that. I never have really gotten the opportunity to just kind of thank you for supporting her in making that decision to go to Duke, supporting her from coming back and seeing you with zero judgment. I mean, zero. You guys have been amazing to her, and she's now successfully had incredible treatment with you.
Tell me a little bit about, so you always say, I love this, that cancer can be viewed as an immunological disorder. We think sometimes of cancer as like this villain within our body, and we need to fight it, but actually the immune system needs to fight it. Do you call this kind of a dendritic vaccine, or what is the term that you use in the therapy that you use?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Now, there's a lot of underlying causes to the mutation in the first place that leads to cancer. And obviously, it's a whole different platform to talk about, is why is this cell, all cells are going to replicate.
Haylie Pomroy: But it doesn't, I mean, it matters, but really something's got to fight it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Right, exactly. Kind of irrelevant to what started it. Who cares now? It needs to be eliminated, and the immune system is supposed to do that. That's its job. Your circulatory system does not fight cancer. Your renal system is not there to fight cancer. Your immune system is. And so why it has failed here, why it does not recognize it, I don't know. That is an active area of research globally, but it has. And so, yes, I routinely say this is immune ignorance. Your immune system's naive. It's not that it can't fight; it doesn't know it's supposed to.
Haylie Pomroy: This therapy is a way to educate the immune system so that it can do what it's designed to do.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. It is fixing a biological mistake with biology.
Haylie Pomroy: I have seen, because of that one case that I was talking about, how much has evolved in Immunocine in the last five years. Where is your hope, where is your dream to see this therapy five years from now?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine has grown very fast.
Haylie Pomroy: I wish that it hadn't, because it would mean cancer was done. But thank God you're doing what you're doing, because I've seen so many people do well.
I mean, I appreciate that. And I'm so glad that it's grown, because that means you're helping so many people. But what's the hope going forward?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: To be clear, we don't cure everyone. It's not magic. I mean, we don't want to mislead anyone. It's a good immune response. It's robust. It's natural. And if you get that going, if you get your own body working correctly instead of kind of against you, you have very good outcomes. So, yes, we're growing kind of rapidly at this point.
Haylie Pomroy: And you have a lot of amazing stories on your website, too.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes, absolutely. And I encourage everyone to go visit and see those very real stories are very touching. The goal for this therapy is, again, this should be a ubiquitous part of all cancer treatment, regardless of if you're going to do radiation or surgery or chemo or a hormone blocker. Let's say you're doing a hormone blocker. OK, great. You've blocked the fuel or a fuel that is feeding cancer growth. What have you done to actually now go on the offensive?
Haylie Pomroy: It sounds so logical.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And well, anytime you understand biology more, it always seems like it's so obvious. Why didn't we see it before? And you change your diet. Great.
I'm not going to tell you that a diet doesn't make a difference to the rate of cancer growth. I'm still going to ask: what have you done to go on the offensive? And your choices are: they can be very harsh toxins and poisons, or it can be educate your immune system.
Haylie Pomroy: With the cancer you had. That's amazing.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It's not an off the shelf. It's going to have to be personalized. But we can do that now. And so get that going. And I'm not going to tell you not. It might be in your best interest to stack another therapy. One of the benefits of this is it doesn't remove any options for you. You still want to do X, Y or Z. You can. This doesn't change that. It changes it as much as if you had the flu. I mean, it's like that. People have asked, will it affect my fertility? Well, no. With the flu? I mean, you need to think about it that way, because that's what we're doing. We're tapping into—
Haylie Pomroy: Rebalancing the immune system
Dr. Matthew Halpert: … of immune response. And so we do want to push it through and get it widespread and all cancers in mainstream medicine. If you ask about Immunocine in particular, I'm going to say echoing the story you gave before, while I know who you're talking about, your friend, and absolutely no judgment. We gave her tons of hours. We educated. We wanted to make sure she understood what this was and why we're doing it.
Haylie Pomroy: You gave her questions to ask her doctor at Duke.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely. But I will tell you, we do that for everyone.
Haylie Pomroy: I know.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: And what I've learned, and this is kind of sad to say, but what I've learned is that sort of compassion and honesty and education and just time investment is somewhat unique. And so not only do we have this specialized treatment, but the way we go about practicing medicine and treating patients is, we're being told by a lot of patients, it's very breath of fresh air kind of response. A lot of patients have even told me, even if I lose this fight, you all have changed everything. You have made this a manageable time in my life. And the more I hear that, the more I realize that if we stay on this path and true to our foundations, Immunocine is probably going to grow much bigger than I originally thought.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I'll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now back to our show.
I would imagine so. First of all, it's making a tremendous impact. But also, I think it's going to change the trajectory of cancer care, period. Because whether it's a standalone treatment or it's a conjunctive therapy, if we don't re-educate our immune system, we're just sitting and waiting and hoping that maybe the one identified, possibly like estrogen receptor positive. Maybe we do an estrogen blocker. Maybe that helps one identified fuel, for this particular cancer. But the thing is, the body's not that reductionistic. One thing doesn't cause it. It's a disharmony within the system. And if we don't retrain the system, another disharmony is going to come down the road. That's the biggest piece.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: I think people often are surprised to learn cancer, well, they are, and they aren't. Cancer mutates. Well, what does that mean now? And at times, I'm very impressed with things like a virus or cancer. And so, cancer, if a chemotherapy or a hormone blocker, let's say something like that is working. And then suddenly, it just seems like it'll stop. It stops working. It's not working anymore. Well, why? Well, there's a couple of reasons. But one is the cancer may have actually learned what is being targeted and has now decided, oh, well, then I'm just going to stop presenting that. I'm going to get rid of it.
Haylie Pomroy: And also, sometimes those things can just annihilate the immune system. And if we don't do something to rebuild it or retrain it or re-educate it in the process, I mean, it's like on the basic level of doing a broad-spectrum antibiotic and not re-inoculating the gut. If we don't do something to restore the host or retrain the host, then we're really putting ourselves at a tremendous risk. I really appreciate just your company's openness to have this discussion. It is cutting-edge science and research, obviously, happening in the United States. But the fact that people can actually access care in real time, to me, is, on a personal level, the most important. How do they get ahold of you one more time?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine.com is our website.
Haylie Pomroy: And is there something that they fill out?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Yes. There's a very simple-to-fill-out form there.
We're not asking a ton of questions at that time. In fact, we talked about should we just put our whole submission form here. And the reality is we don't want to do that until we've had a chance to talk to you. And so if you fill out this easy form, basically just give us some contact info, someone on our team will contact you shortly. We'll go over background of who we are, what we're doing, why this might be helpful. And only then, once you have some decent better understanding and first-line questions answered, will we send you to get some more information. You can also contact us, of course, on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn.
Haylie Pomroy: How do you spell it again?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Immunocine.com
Haylie Pomroy: Let me ask you this last question. If a person's recently had a diagnosis, I'm a huge advocate for knowledge. Sometimes there's analysis paralysis. There's so much data. Your best friend, the people at your church want to give you all kinds of information. Is it best to gather everything and then talk to you, or to begin the conversation early?
Dr. Matthew Halpert: It is helpful if you have some things ready to go, it will speed up the review. You can contact us with nothing. We've had people contact us, and they haven't even officially been diagnosed yet. And we're happy to talk to anyone. That's who we are. But if we want to move forward to, are you a good candidate for this?
Haylie Pomroy: Back to data.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: We're going to need some data.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love that. You know what? I totally baited you. And you're just amazing. Because you're a scientist first. That has a heart that wants to help people. But the fact that you just said get data, get information, because we want to make sure we can help you, as opposed to, of course, come down here and I'll give you a magical shot. I know you don't. But there are so many people that do. And I don't like to see it at any time, but especially with individuals that are dealing with a cancer diagnosis. I just want to thank you for being a brilliant scientist, for pushing immunotherapy and cancer for you're so well respected in that space. But then also for being really, really ethical in treating patients.
I've had the privilege of seeing you at different conferences and getting to meet so many of the patients that have been treated that have a longevity of remission or slowing of progression, sorry, and their stories are just so touching to me. I want this available to anybody and everybody. Please keep pushing the research. I know that it requires a lot of time, energy, effort, and funding. But thank you also for treating patients today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you. I mean, thank you for helping us and again, having us on your show.
Haylie Pomroy: We want to get everybody access. People need options.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: They do. And as you pointed out, I'm a scientist. They don't teach you marketing in graduate school. That's at least not for an immunologist. And so we've been very focused on the science and the medicine and the diagnostics and all the stuff that to me...
Haylie Pomroy: But people can't want to help talking to you after they meet your patients, after they meet the patients that come to your clinic. I mean like I said, when we had an opportunity to talk and ask and talk to people that maybe found you in very interesting ways, we had a connection through a couple of different medical facilities and doctors and clinics. But people are searching. And I do love that information is getting out there more readily because so many people, whether you're getting treated in Kansas or Texas or Oklahoma or New York. There is a wealth of information available now, but you've got to get good care, really good care. There's such a difference in cancer outcomes with people that get good care.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Absolutely.
Haylie Pomroy: All right. Go check out the website, guys. There's tons of data and information. And when you have some data to share with Dr. Matt and his team, reach out so that you can see if immunotherapy, no matter what anybody says, is an option for your body to get retrained into fighting cancer. I love that.
Dr. Matthew Halpert: Thank you.
