Dr. Benson describes how immunotherapy and NK cells work, and why most cancers are genetic or molecular diseases and not anatomical diseases

Dr. Don Benson, MD, PhD, The James Cancer Center, The Ohio State University Interview date: August 16, 2013 

On this week's show, Dr. Don Benson shares how nk (natural killer) cells combat myeloma and how this and other immunotherapy treatments work to use your own immune system to attack the myeloma cells. He shares how his current KIR antibody (an immune therapy) clinical trial works and his patient, Joel Wharton, shares his experience participating in this latest trial (results expected in December 2013). Dr. Benson describes how PD-1 works, why it looks promising and describes his upcoming PD-1 clinical trial next month. He says that we have to stop thinking about myeloma and other cancers as anatomical diseases and think of them as genetic or molecular diseases. If we think about myeloma in this way, we can separate it into sub-types by mutation and then potentially cross-reference those mutations with other cancers that share that mutation.  The live mPatient Radio podcast with Dr. Benson