Ethan Vinodh

IR I/10CC/1st
November 20, 2019

Interviewee:​ Dr. Helina Somervell DNP., MSN., CRNP, FNP-BC

Advance Practice Lead- Division of Surgical Oncology-Breast, Endocrine, and Melanoma
Surgery
The Johns Hopkins Hospital
Surgical Nursing Administration
Interview Date:​ November 16, 2019

Transcription

Ethan Vinodh: Hi Dr. Somervell, It’s a pleasure to meet you and congratulations on your
Nurse Practitioner State Award for Excellence.

Helina Somervell: ​Thank you, Ethan

EV: How do you feel about chemotherapy?

HS: ​So chemotherapy, first of all, is an option for cancer patients, and it’s been available for
many, many years. It is an option for patients for 2 reasons. The first one being the patient is
incurable. I work with surgical oncology, so sometimes we work hand in hand with medical
oncologists. So chemotherapy is sometimes what it is needed.

EV: Do you think that natural therapies do help with cancer?

HS:​ Absolutely, in my area of melanoma and cutaneous oncology, immunotherapy is what is

used. For about 10 years we had no development in the cure, so now in the past, I believe about 5
years, we’ve had an expansion in immunotherapy which is really helping the patients recover
from their disease. Some patients will be treated with immunotherapy before they go to surgery
or sometimes the other way around. But this has given people a lot of hope.

EV: What is your stance on the articles that state CAM and other newer treatments are
‘dangerous’ to use?

HS: ​One of the things that I feel when you look at CAM there is a room for that, but it has to be
well-studied, there is no evidence behind some of these therapies. But when you look at
treatments such as Ayurveda and things like that. People have used them for years and people
have used moringa to treat diabetes. But with diseases like cancer where a lot of biology is
involved, you have to go and understand the biology of the disease and treat it accordingly.

EV: So you would say that more clinical trials/hard data is needed to verify.

HS:​ Yes and another thing is that you wouldn’t want to delay the treatment and thereby affecting
your prognosis.

EV: What is the biggest problem with chemotherapy, if any, in your opinion?

HS: ​A lot of side effects, as you would with immunotherapy. With chemotherapy, it’s things like
hair and weight loss.

EV: What’s the most common thing that you say to your patients?

HS: ​Fortunately for me in my area, a lot of patients do well. So I actually deal with thyroid
cancer, which is a whole new set of treatments. Surgery is first, then radioactive iodine is the
second treatment for that. So what I tell my melanoma/cutaneous patients, I always offer hope.
We always have something to offer, which is the mindset that I want my patients to leave with.

EV: I’ve heard some oncologists say that if you just take chemo drugs you’ll be perfectly
alright, what do you make of that?

HS: ​At the same time, I think when people have cancer they make a total lifestyle change. So,
who’s to say how that’s going to affect you? Like all of a sudden, somebody will say “I’m not
eating any meat or going vegan.” What if your body is not used to that and you’re trying to fight
off this disease? But, I do think it is important to lead a healthy lifestyle.

EV: Thank you for your time!

HS: ​No problem!

 Reflection

This interview was great in the fact that Dr. Somervell told me things about traditional

chemotherapy treatments that I never thought about before. One such example is when I ask her

about how some oncologists think that just taking chemotherapy is enough, I was meaning in a

way that was negative for chemotherapy. But, Dr. Somervell stated that when people do make a

lifestyle change, it could have a negative effect on the body as it is now trying to cope with

cancer as well as the dietary change. The interview was conducted well, I read the questions off

of my phone while still making eye contact. My friend was recording through his phone. We

conducted this interview in an isolated room in my church, although some small ambient sounds

from the orchestra could be heard. I would probably orient my questions even more towards my

advisor and probably ask even more questions. Preparing for the interview was not necessarily

hard, but I did think of the questions that I had that could not be answered by a search engine, but

by a person knowledgeable in the area.

 Ethan Vinodh
IR I/10 CC/1st
January 1, 2020

Interviewee​: Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D.

Director, Inflammation Research Center
San Diego, California USA
Professor (Retd.): The University of Texas
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Interview Date:​ December 26, 2019

Transcription

Ethan Vinodh: Hi Dr. Aggarwal. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

EV: What characteristics of curcumin do you think make it a contender for curing cancer?

BA: ​Curcumin, as you know, is derived from turmeric and it is the yellow color in turmeric. We
happened to work on cancer for the last 40 years, and what we found is that inflammation played
a very important role in most cancers if not all. Too much inflammation can lead to cancer. If
you control inflammation you can control cancer. Curcumin controls inflammation. Therefore,
controlling inflammation, it controls cancer.

EV: Curcumin is infamous for possessing poor solubility and low bioavailability
characteristics, what do you think is the best way of getting past this?

BA: ​That is an issue normally made by people who are trying to make money out of curcumin.
As you know curcumin is cheap, very inexpensive and it was isolated more than 200 years ago
and therefore cannot be patented. The patent law is very weird. They say if A can’t be patented,
B can’t be patented. A + B can be patented. Therefore, people are trying to manipulate curcumin
to make a patent out of it. So when they say curcumin bioavailability is a problem, they’re
looking for free curcumin, meaning not bound to anything. So, there are over 200 different
proteins that curcumin binds to in our body and albumin is one of them. And our body is full of
albumin. So, if you take curcumin in any shape or form, it is not available because it is taken up
by all those guys [albumin]. However, if you take the same curcumin and put some blanket on
it, cover it up with some liposome or some other formulation now it cannot bind. Therefore it is
freely available. So the question is ‘is it more efficacious?’ and the answer is no. So they are
taking mother nature and trying to manipulate it and make a drug out of it so that they can make
money. But not even a single report to my knowledge that if they do that it will work better. All
they are looking for is free curcumin. This means that it cannot bind to anything and therefore it
is available freely. If anything, it may be better because nobody has done a side-by-side to show
that if you reformulate it will become worse or better. In terms of the anti-cancer effect or in
terms of the anti-inflammatory effect all they are looking for is free curcumin that you can see
with your eyes. So that’s #1, #2 is every drug that a man takes, or I take, you take, anybody takes
is metabolized. Curcumin gets metabolized too. So, there is an enzyme called cytochrome-P450
which causes the metabolism [of curcumin]. And black pepper inhibits that enzyme, therefore
curcumin sticks around longer if you combine black pepper. And that is true not just for
curcumin, but for most drugs. They now call it a Superdrug, because now they combine
curcumin with black pepper and they patented it. All they’re trying to do is manipulate Mother
Nature to make money.

EV: I’ve heard in some articles that 95-97% of curcumin gets unabsorbed?

BA: ​That is also a hoax and I spell out in my book and in some of the reviews that I wrote.
Because I happened to discover a molecule that is supposed to cure cancer and that is called
Tumor Necrosis Factor. I am the one who named it TNFa and TNFb and that is what took me to
Houston and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where this TNF was tested in cancer patients. It
turned out that all the patients responded to TNF. But they got more sick than ever before. So
should it be called tumor necrosis factor or tumor-promoting factor? So now TNF blocker has
been approved by the FDA with a market of over $50 billion. No drug known to man has a
bigger market. They are all antibodies of TNF that are made by different companies making
money. I discovered curcumin as a blocker of TNF. As little as 100mg of curcumin, which is
1/10 of a gram will bring down TNF.

EV: That’s all you need.

BA: ​That’s all you need. You are looking for actual response in humans. Taking only 100mg of
curcumin your TNF is down, what more do you need? We are not talking about rats or mice. We
are not talking about cell cultures, we are talking about humans. Then why do you care about its
bioavailability when it is doing the job that it’s supposed to.
EV: In your “Phase II Trial of Curcumin in Patients with Advanced Pancreatic Cancer”, it
states that “...despite the use of doses of curcumin as high as 8 g/d, very little free curcumin
is typically found in patient plasma samples…”. If only low amounts of curcumin are
getting absorbed is it still necessary to take high dosages?

BA: ​Some patients responded and some didn’t. You know to do the clinical trial in humans it is
not trivial therefore you have to pick a dose. Since there is no known toxicity. There are people
from Michigan who have gone to very high doses and haven’t come up with a toxic dose so
arbitrarily we chose to go with 8 grams.

EV: So it was just a random number.

BA: ​Classically speaking, if it was a classical drug you will go with a dose-escalating study. But
none of that has been done.

EV: While I was searching for trials, I noticed that I couldn’t find many Phase III/IV trials,
in fact, I think I only found one. I have seen many Phase I and Phase II trials
recommending higher-level trials to be done as well. Why do you think that many haven’t
been done?

BA: ​They have never been done, and they will never be done. The reason for that being how are
you going to make money out of it? Every trial, 99% of them are done by pharmaceutical
companies to make money. Here they cannot even make a single cent. So why should they
bother? They have gone to the FDA with it and the FDA declared it a grass. So they were like
‘forget about it’. What does grass mean? Generally regarded as say they have no concern. If you
want to take it, take it. They have no concern of any kind. So therefore if a pharmaceutical
company or anybody has to go with those clinical trials, they have to be able to make money. As
of today, there are 350 clinical trials done, but they are all academic trials to publish papers. So if
somebody wants to take it, no problem and there’s no question about it. No safety issue or cost
issue. It is all about whether you think it is right or not.

EV: Well, it has been a pleasure meeting you Dr. Aggarwal. Thanks for agreeing to do this
interview with me and have a happy new year.

BA: ​Sure, you as well.

 Reflection

This interview was great in that I learned a lot of information from a perspective I haven’t
really delved into. Unfortunately, most of my original questions were about bioavailability and
solubility and Dr. Aggarwal said that it was not a scientific problem but was a monetary concern
since no scientific evidence proves that free curcumin is better than natural curcumin. I will look
into that more now. Since he disproved the main idea of several of my questions I had to
improvise at the last minute. Next time, I should probably write questions that ponder different
topics so that this does not happen again. Preparing for this interview was not this hard as they
were questions I was already beginning to ponder.