I thought my experiences with cancerous tumours might be interesting and topical to IMU investors.
For those that don't want to read a book (I understand), my executive summary (TLDR) is this:
1. Almost every aspect of dealing with cancer, especially tumours, whether diagnosis, excision, reconstruction and rehabilitation is extraordinarily expensive, so hospitals will be falling over themselves to license and use these treatments.
2. In many ways, surgery and radiotherapy are imperfect solutions when dealing with cancers and haven't progressed much due to limitations of physical processes.
3. IMO, many side effects with these treatments are caused by one-size-fits-all, the success of IMU treatments will hopefully encourage personalised treatments and thus better outcomes for patients.
4. IMU treatments which offer lower cost and less traumatising options, can offer help to people who would otherwise be denied.
Last year during peak-Covid19, I was diagnosed with a large fast-growing stage-3 tumour in the back of my tongue, near the throat.
It needed to come out ASAP, so had no time to think or ponder.
Unfortunately, due to the almost-inaccessible location, half of my lower face including jaw needed to be removed to gain access to the tumour.
Along with losing half of my tongue, also lost lower left jaw complete with teeth, and lymph nodes in the neck.
Operation took 14 hours and involved 6 surgeons, 3 of them plastics.
Spent several days in ICU and all up two weeks in a hospital which is well known for pushing patients out early to free up much-needed beds.
12 months later, I have had yet another operation, and still am due to have set of implants to replace my missing teeth in my prosthetic jaw.
Along with rehabilitation, speech therapy, and monthly visits to oncology, this has been a very expensive cost for the health system.
Conclusion: Car-T has the potential to reduce or even eliminate large swathes of surgical excision, resection, reconstruction and rehabilitation costs, thus hospitals should be falling over themselves to use and license these procedures.
The diagnosis via petscan and one other process, was for full body and separate head scan.
The surgeons were unable to determine from the coarse resolution whether tumour had spread to my jaw. It looked very close, so I told them to take it all out, much preferred more surgery and to lose more things than to have to suffer through weeks or months of radiotherapy.
Radiotherapy, while beneficial in killing most small tumours, is very damaging to surrounding flesh and has the potential to cause yet more cancers in the long term, so was wanting to avoid this.
The biopsies were inconclusive, so samples were sent to specialists in Sydney for a second opinion.
When those second opinions came back undecided, my surgeons decided to treat the tumours as cancerous as opposed to pre-cancerous.
After the operation, full biopsies determined tumours were indeed cancerous, but my jaw was not, so I lost half of my lower jaw and teeth all for nothing.
The problem is that scans are necessarily limited in resolution via physical processes and tumours are not always well-defined.
It can be difficult to know where a tumour ends and good flesh starts.
Because of this, surgeons will often be 'generous' when cutting around tumours. Even then, they may leave parts behind.
Conclusion: In many ways, despite this being the age of vast connected nets of computers, we haven't progressed much beyond the 50's.
Current procedures are still barbaric and akin to doing surgery and radiotherapy with chainsaws and nuclear weapons.
Whereas IMU therapies like Car_T are more like using nano-scale scalpels and microscopic heat-seeking missiles.
Although not a medical professional, I happen to think many side-effects are due to treatments not being able to be tailored to patients more precisely. Think chemotherapy cocktails, massive dosages of radiotherapy, and cutting out good flesh/innocent body parts not wanting to leave potential tumours behind.
Conclusion: We have now entered the era of treatments like Car T therapy and other IMU therapies being precisely targeted to patients.
Cancer treatment is very costly. Because public health funds are limited, many people will be denied treatment because resources are being prioritised towards those who will live longer.
Then too, surgery and radiotherapy and chemotherapy can be very traumatic.Due to surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy being so traumatic, many patients are denied treatment, either because they are too old, feeble, or have co-morbidities such that they may not survive treatments, or if they do, will have an extremely impaired quality of life.
Conclusion: IMU therapies, being much cheaper and less invasive/traumatising than traditional treatments, will open the doors to patients who would otherwise be turned away.
I believe that with these IMU technologies, we are starting to make a break and move from the 50's to the space-age era of truly modern medicine.
Expand
(20min delay)