Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors and ommissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes To Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly, founder of Yes To Life, the UK’s integrative cancer care charity, currently celebrating our 20th year of supporting people with cancer with information regarding integrative medicine and all the resources available to help them with physical, mental and emotional challenges. My guest today is Dr. Sean Devlin. Dr. Devlin is hugely experienced in supporting people with cancer and in this wide -ranging conversation we’re speaking about such diverse topics as repurposed drugs, cannabis medicines, practitioner burnout and what great cancer care looks like. So pleased to have you as my guest on the Yes To Life show.

Dr Sean Devlin
A pleasure. Thank you, Robin.

Robin Daly
So from my side of the planet, I hear nothing but compliments about the way that you work with people. So I’m really keen to find out some more for myself. Seems like you’ve completely focused on cancer in your work, surely one of the most challenging areas of medicine, you must like a challenge. By now, you seem to have invested heavily in studying this area and you’ve got a considerable weight of experience supporting people. So the first thing I want to ask you is about your overall aims. So a new patient comes to see you, apart from the obvious, well, you want to make them well. Are there some aims that you have for all your patients regardless of the specifics of their situation?

Dr Sean Devlin
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I like to do is empower the patient because a lot of times they feel disempowered. They’re overwhelmed. I always use the analogy of sort of the deer in the headlight phenomenon. They’ve either had a new diagnosis when they see me or they’re dealing with a recurrence or progression of disease that hasn’t responded to the care they’ve gotten. So my take on it is to number one, disenfranchise the cancer to some degree because it’s a symptom of an underlying issue and they are still alive. They still have capacity, most likely to receive care if they’re coming in to see me. And I acknowledge their autonomy in the process because I think a lot of times in this state of either fear or flight or fawn where they just freeze, they’re kind of ushered along a traditional program of care, which in my opinion unfortunately has been aligned when we look at traditional oncology.

Dr Sean Devlin
I think a lot of people, I think they use the term cut, burn, poison too much. And I think that already sets the stage for black crepe and dark clouds. And people are like, I don’t want to do any of that. This doesn’t make any sense. And I think really one of the most critical things I can do is to bring about either a sense of calm or peace for the patient and then secondarily a process of education around how do we create either a personalized plan or use precision -based diagnostics to really guide therapy so therapy is theirs directed at an N of one, that patient, and not a cookie cutter approach that’s based on large data. And I don’t have an issue with that. The big problem is it doesn’t really apply to everyone because if it was 100% effective, I wouldn’t be doing what I do, right?

Robin Daly
right you wouldn’t have a job right yeah absolutely that sounds great i love that i’ll approach you’re talking about there of actually empowering people in that way because you’re right there they’re like in a terrible situation they need help basically and so somebody can actually bolster them up in that way and say okay there there are resources we can find out what’s what can really help you uh marvelous that’s exactly what they need so you mentioned uh clinical testing and things there i’m interested to hear say there’s a spectrum that starts uh one end relying entirely on symptoms and clinical judgment the other end relying entirely on tests in between those two how do you navigate those two approaches

Dr Sean Devlin
Yeah, I think it’s a good question because I think a lot of times there’s a tendency to rely on technology and to maybe even step away from what classically we’ve learned as physicians and that’s really to lay hands on patients in a sense of doing a physical exam, doing a history taking process that really can help glean and guide where the patient came from, where they’re at today. I think the art and science of a history and physical exam is somewhat being lost. I think some practitioners just, hey, we have these diagnostic tests, this is what we’re going to do. I’ve had some patients who’ve come in with a diagnosis of a tumor that is palpable from the outside and I’ve talked to them and said, so what did the doctor think about the mass? They asked me, what do you mean think about the mass? They say, it’s there, it should be cut out and I said, when they examined you, what did they say about it? They didn’t describe it and say, well, they didn’t examine me.

Dr Sean Devlin
That’s not all the time obviously, but it’s enough times that I go, okay, there’s certain parts of exams that we don’t like to do. Nobody’s really thrilled to get a pelvic or a rectal exam, but at the end of the day, it’s part and parcel of how we gather data on the patient’s case. We try to be respectful, we try to be kind in the process and acknowledge the fears around having that done, but it has to be done in order to provide the best of care. On the counter side, the diagnostic tools that we have are almost limitless and new companies are coming out with more and more testing, but beyond imaging and beyond basic lab tests, I think there lives a space now for what I would call the groundwork for precision based oncology and that’s going to be looking at circulating tumor cell DNA in the blood that’s going to be looking for cancer cells that are circulating in the blood and then from the tumor or the pathology of the tumor itself,

Dr Sean Devlin
there’s the possibility to do what we call next generation sequencing and that process is probably, I don’t know, it’s many years old, but I would say kind of garnered some attraction in the past decade, maybe a little more. I’ve been using it for quite some time. My background is before I went to medical school, I did research in a cancer center and they really focused on looking at cell lines and sensitivities and what possibly we could bring to bear as far as either chemotherapeutic or targeted agents go and I think it was kind of like that was sort of the embryonic period. Now it’s full blown and so people can really learn a lot about their tumor and with that being said, it’s how that information is used and what reflexive recommendations you would make based on that information, but I think more importantly is the fact that we can gather this data with minimal injury to the patient.

Dr Sean Devlin
It’s not like we have to go back and read biopsy the tumor a bunch of times. We may have to for whatever reason, but mostly it’s gathering blood samples and we can then monitor not only response to disease progression, but also how the tumor is evolving and the tumor is evolving all the time.

Robin Daly
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing how the whole area of testing, there’s so much out there now, as you say, and there is that temptation to just say, well, you know, we got all this data now, we hardly need to look at the person, we just use the data. But I’m very hard to hear you say how important the whole person to person clinical assessment really is as well. And I think maybe one of the greatest things about the testing is the way we can actually monitor what we’re doing and how effective it’s being. You know, the amount you can help guide the journey and get the best route forward, and also psychologically and emotionally give confidence to the person who’s being treated that they’re actually, yes, they’re investing in heavily in all this approach that you’re bringing to them, but it’s actually look at it and actually see the results. Extraordinarily important.

Dr Sean Devlin
not a thing. I agree and the funny thing is that it’s slowly being adopted by traditional practitioners and I think as the evidence starts to bear fruit that there’s a there there and that by gathering this data we’re not like on a goose chase we’re actually going after information that can allow us to target specific expressed you know proteins that can provide us really a precision -based response in many cases we end up finding things that are not sort of NCCN guideline or ASCO recommended medications and so we’re using these medications in an off -label manner but they’re garnering traction and what’s kind of cool is there will be a time with AI currently employed now in developing these matrices or frameworks where we’re going to be able to take all that data put it into integrative oncology you know AI program and they’re going to start to spit out molecules peptides and other targeted therapies that we’re going to be able to give precision base to the patient and I mean we’re probably not far off from that I’m guessing three to five years that’s actually being used in research labs now to determine how to best target what we would consider the untargetable right the undrugable proteins that are expressed on some of these cancer cells and and to set into motion you know second messenger systems that you know either stabilize you know neoplastic cells or force them into apoptosis and we clear them from the body and I think that’s kind of where we’re heading I mean immunotherapy has added a lot to our treatment toolbox and it’s proven very useful now in a variety of solid tumors and some liquid tumors so that piggybacked on these new targeted therapies that are coming down the pipeline I mean it’s really an exciting time to do this kind of work and I think more and more cancer even at advanced stages stage four it’s going to be kind of a chronic disease model that people end up passing from something else you know unfortunately we all get a go right at some point in time and if people want to put cancer on the back burner and have that event be a cardiac event at 91 in a nursing home well god bless them that’s good but really right now it’s it’s there’s a lot of stuff coming out at us and I think as a practitioner we just have to keep in the game as far as educating ourselves and reevaluating what we’re doing because it is about evolving and honing the tip of the spear so that we can serve our patients the best

Robin Daly
Yeah, it’s just interesting where the progress is being made that, as you say, where we seem to be heading towards cancer being a chronic condition that can be managed. And that is making quite rapid progress, it seems, with, particularly with the kind of diagnostics you’ve been speaking about. But cures, they’re a lot harder to come by. And of course, prevention, we’re doing nothing, you know, no progress at all, it’s getting worse. So we’re going to have a lot of people that are going to need that care, that’s for sure, the way we’re heading. So I’d certainly hope that you’re right, that we do actually get that kind of level of control that people need in order to not just be decimated by the disease. Okay, well, look, as I said in the outset, I’ve got lots of great feedback from people who love the care that you’ve given them.

Robin Daly
And this is Yes To Life’s 20th year, our charity’s 20th year. And we’re actually bringing attention to the doctor -patient relationships here. I’m quite keen to talk to you a bit about this. It’s something that, within our NHS Oncology services, it’s in urgent need of radical change. So I just wondered if you’d come back and sort of summarise the elements that constitute great cancer care from your perspective. you

Dr Sean Devlin
I mean, that’s a good question. I think first and foremost, it’s an individualized process, and I think as a clinician, we can always do better. One of the things I think is really important is I think doctors like to chat, and I think patients need to be heard, and I think they need to be listened to. And that’s probably one of the most important things I can do, is certainly developing an initial relationship to understand where they’re coming from, because some patients, they come to me, and they’re not necessarily interested in the cure. They’re interested in some sort of therapy that will help sustain their life and the quality of life they’re having for as long as possible. And they have a reality -based understanding that they have this advanced stage disease, and they want to do the most with that that they can without suffering the ramifications or side effects of therapies.

Dr Sean Devlin
So I’m always about figuring out what they really want or need. The other thing is the empowerment process is really to give them that information so they can actually digest and figure out what’s best for them, and always in the process acknowledging and respecting their autonomy. I can’t force them to do anything, and I don’t want to shame them into doing something. I want them to come to the conclusion that’s best for them. I always sort of conclude my first consult with if what I’m sharing with you resonates with your mind and your body and your spirit, and emotionally it’s okay for you to receive this information, then it’s probably a good direction to go in.

Dr Sean Devlin
But if you’re getting resistance on any level, take a step back. Think about this, process it, and then let’s revisit it again in the future. I think those are the most empowering things we can do for the patient, but at the end of the day, everyone has to be handled just a little differently in a sense that I’m there to meet their needs, and they’re not there to meet my needs. I have to always remember that I’m in the service industry, I’m a servant providing a set of care. I’m ready to drink. As soon as I either get on a soapbox or I think I’m holier than thou, I get into trouble. I always use the term drinking your own Kool -Aid. I don’t drink my own Kool -Aid, I set it aside a long time ago because it can poison your own reality, and you start to think that you can either do or be things that are beyond your own capacity, in a sense that you become thinking magically in that direction.

Dr Sean Devlin
I’m very grounded with my patients, and I’m very logician -based. I try to practice a logical, evidence -based style with them. I do get patients who have very magical thoughts around their disease and disease process, and I will support them as much as I can, but I will try to also dissuade them from pursuing quackery or high chicanery or whatever, snake oil, because there’s a lot of that out there in this realm, and it is very offensive and abusive to patients who are suffering and who are scared to death.

Robin Daly
Right, okay, great. Yeah, I love the way you said you sort of hand the baton back to your patients at the end of the consultation, say, well, you know, go away and see what you thought of this, and if it’s not quite right, come back in the year. That’s fantastic piece of empowerment for them. Yeah, great. And, and also that thing about being absolutely clear what your role is there to actually serve the patient, you know, because certainly, you know, in our NHS, your role is appealing to the system. So completely different ballgame. So anyway, I’m going to give details of we’ve actually developed a six point charter for oncology in the UK, which we launched a few days ago, contains all the points you just talked about, maybe not say the same way, but they’re all in there.

Robin Daly
And, you know, we want to cause a bit of a stir with this get people talking about it. We’ve got a petition for people to support it and everything. So I should give details at the end. But it’s exactly the kind of relationship you just described is what we want to actually support. So we want to turn things around and get it so that people who can’t really a much better deal in terms of being looked after. Okay, so I read this about you. Dr. Devlin has a great interest in helping fellow clinicians find their passion again for the practice of medicine, as many of his colleagues are overwhelmed inside the current medical culture, which is driven by business measures more than around human health and happiness. So on a surface that could look like a US problem resulting from the American medical model. But actually, it’s no different here with our public NHS system. Less direct maybe, but business is still the primary driving force behind medicine.

Robin Daly
So what do you find are the most effective ways of reconnecting clinicians with their original passion and impulse to improve the lives of patients

Dr Sean Devlin
This is a paramount importance and it’s an excellent question Robin because we are having such an issue with burnout, physicians kind of losing that spark, losing the passion for the care of the patient and it is something that will end up costing us in the long run and we’re getting into a situation now where literally the wisdom keepers, the intellectual giants in medicine are really stepping back and re -evaluating their own lives and they’re suffering their own crisis points. Part of it is the serial moral injury that occurs in medicine in general. I spent many years working in an emergency room and I saw many of my colleagues have to quit or go about doing something else. Someone on, they got an MBA or they went into business or they got out of medicine, right? The kind of things that we see in medicine, if you have any empathy at all, will can tear you apart and we see an increased risk for suicide among clinicians, drug abuse, adultery, I mean really slipping into mental illness.

Dr Sean Devlin
It is a real problem and if we don’t deal with the issue around moral injury, we’re going to have more attrition. There’ll be more loss of my colleagues to all sorts of things from either retirement early or suicide. My take is that you have to, it’s a one -on -one process and I’ve talked to many of my colleagues who are feeling kind of there at the end of their rope, right? I always have them take a step back because at the end of the day, sometimes it’s a money issue where they’re like, I have an ex -wife, I have two ex -wives, I have all these kids, I got to pay this, I got to do that. They make up excuses for why they continue to stay in the race and why they don’t back out a little bit or take a holiday or do a retreat or self -empowerment workshop or something, something to have them reevaluate why they even got into medicine.

Dr Sean Devlin
So a lot of times, I’ll just get down to like, hey, tell me how you felt when you got your acceptance to medical school. What’d that feel like, right? Can you imagine it? And if you can’t, why not? Because most people were like, yes, I got in, I’ve worked this hard, I struggled, I sacrificed weekends and vacations just to earn the scholastic merit to get into medical school. And then I ask them, okay, when you got placed in residency, how’d you feel? Like, oh my gosh, great, I got my top choice. And then you ask, okay, well, when you did your fellowship or when you got your first job, how’d you feel? A lot of times the story is the same. They’re excited, they’re passionate, they’re ready to go, but 20 years into it, they’re just like, it’s overwhelming, it’s heartbreaking, it’s more than I thought it would be.

Dr Sean Devlin
And the other issue is administration. Administration has really incapacitated a lot of the potential healing and inner work that physicians need to do because they’re about the bottom line. They’re about moving the patients through a system and garnering those reimbursements if it’s insurance based or the direct payments from patients. And that model, everyone suffers, right? So back in the good old days, there was this character named Marcus Welby, right? And he was a primary care doctor, did his thing, but he had one -on -one relationships with his patients. And never did you see a third or fourth or fifth party influencing that relationship, right? So it’s very authentic. And I think in some ways, some of us who do private practice are trying to reclaim some of that autonomy in the medical model. And I would reach out to any of my colleagues out there to try to do the same thing, even if it’s cutting back to halftime, working in the system, and then creating your own medical model outside of that.

Dr Sean Devlin
There’s a desperate cry by the communities that I’m exposed to that really want authentic, deep relationships with their healthcare providers. And I think there will be a day when that will happen, but not until physicians become empowered to make that decision.

Robin Daly
Interesting. And the other aspect by time, but the kind of burnout you described is what we’ve just been talking about, which is where the relationships are wrong. You know, I find it in the health system here. Yeah, there is this lack of care, basically, it’s called health care, but actually, it’s not caring, it’s a system, you know, and you fit the system. And if you’re lucky, it does a good job. But there isn’t the level of care in there. It’s actually built out of the system. And unfortunately, there’s not just the patients who suffer from that. This is, I think, the practitioners themselves suffer deeply from this, they aren’t able to care for themselves and each other within the system. And I think that’s another aspect which leads, everyone’s sort of working in isolation, surviving, you know, in survival mode. And when you’re in survival mode, it’s like, well, it’s terrible for your whole psychology in your body, just to work in that way every day.

Robin Daly
And I think, you know, fast and this whole delivery thing that’s happening, which, you know, it’s running a huge machine, it’s, yeah, total burnout material.

Dr Sean Devlin
Yeah. You know, Robin, one of the things that I think a lot of professionals suffer from is this idea of imposter syndrome. There is a thought that, you know, like, wow, I arrived, I’m here, I’m seeing patients, I’m on my own, I’m doing surgery. I’m like, wow, I’m a doc, right? This is super cool. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of self -doubt that lives within the physician’s mind. And any healthy physician will always sort of question like, hey, you know, should I be here? Should I be doing this? And I think it’s a very rational place to be in. But over time, the more you suffer this moral injury, you know, conceptually, seeing people suffer, die, dismembered, you develop what we call chronic PTSD. And it’s a lot of times not overt. It’s not like, you know, you’re shaking and shivering next to your bed going, oh my gosh, I’m having a flashback to a war scene. But more like this pervasive pressure on you that is disabling and you habitually start to do things that aren’t healthy for you.

Dr Sean Devlin
And it causes, you know, your cortisol to rise. It increases your risk for developing cancer. It doesn’t allow you to sleep well. So all these things that contribute to the unhealthiness of being a practitioner will eventually catch up with us and has. And you can see in the statistics that in general, physicians don’t live longer than the average population. They actually live less than the average citizen because of some of that turmoil and pressure that they’re they undergo literally for years. And one of the other confounding factors is, you know, I did shift work for years, so I would be working, you know, like overnight. Right. And I’d be kept up either half the night or all the night. I’m seeing patients and then try to function the next day. And it is it’s demoralizing at times, it’s disabling, and it’s physically atrocious. And things have to be considered when we look to care for the caretaker, you know, and the systems have to be reevaluated because we are part of the equation.

Dr Sean Devlin
In other words, just like you may see patients not getting care, you’re seeing physicians not getting care. And they’re the two most important components. Right. And absolutely. And it’s broken. So.

Robin Daly
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, big change of topic now, you become heavily associated with cannabis as medicine. So every year or two, there’s an unconventional sort of poster child strategy for cancer comes along, and cannabis has definitely been one of those few years back with all sorts of claims being made for its effectiveness. The nature of things seems to be that once the hype’s over, the science begins to develop, and we start to get a clearer picture of what the strategy can do, and what it can’t, of course. So the best poster children settle down to generally be useful for some people some of the time. But I was thinking that by now, the science behind cannabis must be maturing. I think you’ve probably been helping that to happen, in fact. And with your extensive experience, you must be a great person to give us a review of how things stand, particularly in regards to meeting the challenges of cancer.

Dr Sean Devlin
Yeah, so it is. It’s a controversial topic and I was exposed to it long ago in graduate school. I had done some research on the endocabinoid system and knew that it was a system much in parallel with the parasympathetic nervous system, sympathetic nervous system, and it sort of played its own role, but it was pretty pervasive. I mean, you would find these CB1, CB2 receptors throughout the body and they affected everything from white blood cells to muscle tissue. So when you look at the cambinoids in general, and there’s a big family of them, 200 plus different cambinoids, but as a plant, it has many other, it has terpenes in it, polyphenols, it has other aspects to it that have kind of been part and parcel of the story of the Rick Simpson oil,

Dr Sean Devlin
right? So Rick Simpson oil came out a while ago as a gentleman from Canada who was dealing with cancer and he had used it to some effect and resolve what he was dealing with. And a lot of people sort of grasped onto that because as you know, if you have cancer and you think, wow, a natural product that could prove useful to me and reasonably considered harmless, that I’m all in, right? Unfortunately, that led to a stampede of people taking cannabis, using cannabis and not in maybe gleaning the benefits they’re hoping to get. I would say, in my experience, cannabis is phenomenal at either as an adjunct to pharmaceuticals or used solely alone. I mean, some people just don’t tolerate pharmaceuticals as well. I think it’s great to help with some aspects of nausea, some aspects of anxiety. In some cases, it can help with pain, certainly when done in conjunction with other things, can help with sleep.

Dr Sean Devlin
That’s all fantastic, right? And we kind of know that. And it can also stimulate appetite for those who are cacti, can maybe help them consume more calories. Yeah, but at the end of the day, the data that we have, whether it be from Dr. Guzman, I think he’s out of Spain, and then Mashulam, unfortunately, who’s past, basically the godfather of cambenoids, we are really left with the understanding that through some of these receptor interactions, that you can up -regulate certain genes that can lead to cell cycle slowing or even cell cycle arrest in cancer cells. And you can also get apoptosis to occur, right? Because you change some of the mechanisms of what’s going on internally in the cell, and if the cell is set up for it, it will trigger those genes to induce basically cell suicide.

Dr Sean Devlin
So we know that there might be some subtle effects or light, light, light chemo effects from cambenoids, but that’s yet to be proven out. And until that model changes, and as you know, at least in the US, the DEA is looking at repositioning cannabis as a Schedule III drug. So that could bring about a lot of excitement around using cambenoids more directly in all the states that have an interest in doing so medically. So I think then there’ll be money going into more research and exploration. I do.

Robin Daly
Yeah, interesting. So essentially, you’re saying that apart from helping you with a quite a range of important side effects, it can also support the body in coming to terms with cancer in useful ways that we don’t know about it so much as being like an anti cancer approach directly, but it will support your own system in in dealing with cancers. That’d be fair.

Dr Sean Devlin
That’s kind of the theory of how it’s looked at, depending on who you talk to, right? And I am, you know, with anything I share with you, I’d say, certainly around cannabis, take with a grain of salt in the sense that we are still exploring this medicine, right? And it’s not just like THC or CBD or CBN or CBG. It is a cacophony of, you know, compounds that are considered cambenoids or terpenes or polyphenols that may be playing a role in how patients are dealing with their underlying disease. And that’s yet to be ferreted out. I mean, we just don’t know. But we do know from isolated studies where they’re exposing cells to CBD or THC or, you know, compounds that are part of the cambenoid family that have expressed effects on cancer cell lines.

Dr Sean Devlin
So we know that it is there. But we haven’t done any big double -blind placebo -controlled trials like looking at cannabis users, specifically in a chemo trial, right, head -to -head. But we do have information that suggests from early research that, you know, if you’re a smoker and you also consume cannabis, that you’re less likely to develop lung cancer. I think it was from the 80s, the study was done. And there’s other studies to suggest that certainly cannabis use can be associated because of, you know, pro -inflammatory effects with some cancers. But at the end of the day, that there’s some nullifying effect to that driver, to that cancer driver. So I think we have yet to determine the specifics. But I think in time, that will come, especially if it gets rescheduled.

Robin Daly
So for yourself, do you find it’s a useful part of your practice?

Dr Sean Devlin
You know, in some cases, you know, it’s really funny, a lot of people come to see me because of that. And then they’re like, wow, like all this other information. So I say, well, yeah, it’s just another one stop shop, but I never want to ostracize or shame anybody because some people, I mean, like I have like, you know, professionals that come to see me that are like, Hey, listen, I got to keep this on the DL, but I’m dying during chemo. Like I can’t control the nausea, you know, I’m on fender again, I’m on a scopolomy patch, I’m doing this, I’m doing that. And they’re not feeling the results that they want to feel to tolerate the therapy. So if cannabis can help them be compliant with life saving therapy, yeah, I’m a big fan of it.

Robin Daly
Okay, another change of topic, your interest extends into drug repurposing, a field that’s gone from pretty much obscurity a few years ago into the mainstream of integrated thinking, I mean like a very few years. What would you say has been the effect of the increase in understanding and utilisation of this field, the medicine for people with cancer?

Dr Sean Devlin
Well, it’s really it’s really penetrated deeply into that community. And, you know, thanks to the likes of Jane McClellan, who have really put it into layman’s terms and employed it herself. I think we’ve empowered a whole new generation of cancer folks that are using it and they’re getting it through everybody from their primary care doctor to their oncologist. So I think the role for it is going to grow. And as we do more precision based personalized cancer care, we’re going to find out that there’s more roles for these meds. And the funny thing is, is some of the meds we give are already shown to be effective at extending your life from other diseases.

Dr Sean Devlin
So whether it be diabetes or coronary vascular disease, there’s a benefit. Right. So a lot of patients are like, how long am I going to be on this stuff? And I’m just like, well, till we get you to a point where you’re either any deer disease is grossly stable and even at any day and you’re at five years, I would certainly evaluate what the role might be long term because we have some young young patients in their, you know, late 20s, early 30s, you know, they may live another 50, 60 years. And I want to make sure that they’re taking the best care of themselves now and maybe cancer is that wake up call for them to deal with lifestyle, their, you know, their diet exercise plan. And then these repurpose meds, I think there’s always a role for these repurpose meds in a variety of cases, even in prevention. So I’m excited about what the what the research is going to show downstream. But right now I, you know, I use them all the time.

Robin Daly
Interesting. Well, Jane McClellan herself, of course, is a pretty extraordinary story. I’m just wondering, have you had a case, even you’ve been surprised with the results, how successful it’s been using repurposed drugs?

Dr Sean Devlin
Yeah, so I would say some of the most exciting ones really, when I first started doing it, it was really with recalcitrant disease, you know, so some diseases that didn’t really respond well to chemo, immunotherapy really wasn’t a thing, you know, this is in the mid -2000s. And so traditionally, I would basically be using things like anti -inflammatory agents, I use metformin a lot, atorvastatin, because we had early data on that, some antibiotics. So we would incorporate all those. I would say some of the biggest things that we’ve benefited from in the patient population subsets would be anybody who was either pre -diabetic or even diabetic, getting their blood sugar under tight control, getting their circulating insulin as low as possible.

Dr Sean Devlin
And then lastly, would be sort of shutting down the drivers for inflammation, right? So if you can reduce the anabolic pressure given by insulin when it’s secreted in the body and reaction to sugar, and then you can decrease the amount of inflammation in a tumor, then you can make traction on that disease and you can keep it stable. I’ve had patients who we got their hemoglobin A1c down from like 6 .2 to 4 .5, 4 .6 with exercise, ketogenic diet and medications, and seeing their SUV fall in half at 90 to 120 days. And this happened over and over again, because that tumor is so sensitive to what you’re feeding it. And if it’s highly biologically active and shows that on a PET scan, then you can really shut down some of those drivers by taking away some of these fuels, specifically sugar and inflammatory factors.

Dr Sean Devlin
So yeah, I mean, I’ve seen some really great responses with repurposed drugs alone. And certainly, obviously, the research done in the UK around GBM, that was pretty amazing to show that it’s extensive life past that five -year mark when people are only really given 11 months with that diagnosis.

Robin Daly
Yeah, and extraordinary. Yeah, so I mean, that gives great hope to people. I mean, you’ve just been describing people who are in the worst situation, actually, as people with very rapidly growing cancers, you know, which are out of control, and then probably not responding to all the usual lines of chemo, whatever. It’s fantastic. There’s something as simple, cheap, and, you know, pretty non -toxic as some of these drugs are, can provide you with that kind of level of control.

Dr Sean Devlin
Absolutely.

Robin Daly
Okay, one thing to just ask you to finish up, you’re one of the founders of the International Organization of Integrated Cancer Physicians, a non -profit cancer research and educational foundation. I’ve not heard of it before. Can you tell us what it is and why you set it up?

Dr Sean Devlin
The IOICP was basically a board of physicians that had come together who had been doing integrative oncology for a period of time, and it really coalesced around the teachings of Dr. Donato. Dr. Donato is a Mexican -based physician who originally taught me the concept of insulin potentiated therapy, what we now call basically fractionated chemotherapy with a biological response modifier. It was in conjunction with one of his long -term surviving patients that they invited physicians to have a meeting, and I think really kind of one of our first functional meetings was in 2003, 2004, and then after that we’d have subsequent stateside meetings where this long -term survivor, her name was Annie Brandt, put together a conference that welcomed both physicians and patients. It was one of the first times that this had happened with us. Annie Appleseed Project and FOMFA, she was the one that put together the one that was really geared towards patients and featured clinicians.

Dr Sean Devlin
This was kind of an equal balanced one, and the IOICP was birthed out of that process. One of the goals was to educate other clinicians on some of the tools that we use diagnostically and therapeutically for treating cancer patients that would be considered integrative or functional in nature, and that’s what we ended up doing, and we’ve been doing it basically ever since. We had a few years off with COVID. Unfortunately, Annie Brandt, our founder, did pass, and then ultimately we kind of rebirthed with the best answer for cancer, or best answers for cancer, as well as the Annie Appleseed Project, which was Anne Fompas, and fortunately she passed in January.

Dr Sean Devlin
Yes, I know. A lot of these leaders have dwindled and gone away, and I’m one of … I think there’s three survivors on the original IOICP board that are still with us, and the rest have all passed, unfortunately, but it’s an eclectic group of people, a lot of eccentric folks, low salary, but at the end of the day, everyone means well, they’ve got good hearts, they’re focused on patient care, and it’s been enjoyable to see the evolution of it.

Robin Daly
Yeah, but you know, it’s been a big journey, isn’t it? And there’s been a lot of players building their way in lots of different directions. And actually, it’s the ability to come together in a way of this rogues gallery. It was very dissipated 25 years ago, but it has actually turned into a movement somehow. And you can actually feel this real momentum toward integration now, which really didn’t exist before. So it’s heartening. And as well. Thank you very much. It’s been really interesting to talk to you. And thanks very much for coming around the show and sharing some of your long, long experience and your passion for improving a lot of those of the counter is pretty unmistakable. I’m sure our listeners will be inspired to explore some new options.

Dr Sean Devlin
Thank you so much, Robin. Have a blessed night and we’ll talk soon.

Robin Daly
With practitioners such as Dr. Devlin around, it’s hard to believe that the myth of there being nothing outside of conventional oncology other than charlatanism still persists in any form. I mentioned our efforts at Yes to Life to put a spotlight on the arena of the doctor -patient relationship that Dr. Devlin was speaking about, with a view to prompting radical reform. This is taking the form of our Charter for Oncology, and I encourage you all to take a look at it. Just go to the Yes to Life website, that’s YesToLife .org .uk, and click the Find Out More button that appears on the banner at the top of the homepage, advertising our 20th anniversary activities. Follow the links to the charter, and there you’ll find a downloadable, shareable version of the full charter, as well as a link to the petition that we’ve set up to go and support and draw attention to the campaign.

Robin Daly
Thanks so much for listening today. Please do make a point for joining me again next week for another Yes To Life show here on UK Health Radio. Goodbye.