117-Dr. Lucas Tims - Decoding Cancer Testing Options

This episode kicks off Season 5 of the Believe Big podcast, and Ivelisse  welcomes back Dr. Lucas Tims of Root Causes Medical Clinic to untangle the confusing world of cancer testing.

 Dr. Tims unpacks chemosensitivity tests like RGCC and Datar/OncoStat, including real criticisms around consistency and a key blind spot: lab dishes can't recreate the body's tumor microenvironment, so immune-modulating therapies like mistletoe or IV vitamin C can look ineffective even when they're not. 

He explains where these tests still shine, especially for narrowing down later-line chemo or targeted options. He then draws a clear line between monitoring and treatment selection: Signatera tracks ctDNA/MRD after surgery to watch for recurrence, while Tempus profiles tumor genomics to surface druggable targets like PD-L1 for immunotherapy. He also introduces Astron Health as a second-opinion, tumor-board-style review, and Celcuity for pinpointing true driver pathways, with relevance reaching beyond solid tumors into blood cancers. 

Throughout, Dr. Tims returns to one grounding principle: no single test tells the whole story. He encourages listeners to work with their clinicians and pair tumor testing with integrative "terrain" testing, inflammation, immune function, toxins, hormones, gut health, and stress, for the fullest picture of their cancer.

Learn more about Dr. Lucas Tims and Root Causes Medical Clinic here.
Substack: rootcauses.substack.com
The SEED Program White Papers >

Suggested Resources:

• BOOK:  The Metabolic Approach to Cancer by Dr. Nasha Winters and Jess Higgins Kelley
• About RGCC Cancer Testing and Oncostat
• Datar Cancer Genetics website, home page
• Signatera
• Tempus
• Astron Health
  
  

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Transcript

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Blood Cancers and Celcuity

Ivelisse Page 0:07

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big Podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big Podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page, and I'm thankful to spend this time with you. Returning to our podcast today is one of our favorite guests and my friend, Dr. Lucas Tims of Root Causes Medical Clinic in San Antonio, Texas. He's here to talk about testing options for cancer patients. Dr. Tims has previously been our guest on three previous episodes to talk about high-dose IVC in the cancer arena, sugar and its role in cancer cells, and most recently, ivermectin in the cancer journey. Last year, he was a speaker at the Believe Big Integrative Cancer Symposium and also participated in our panel discussion. Originally from Northwest Arkansas, Dr. Tims is a graduate of the University of Arkansas, where he majored in microbiology. He went on to complete his medical training at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona, before moving to Tulsa for an oncology-focused residency program of City of Hope, formerly known as Cancer Treatment Centers of America. In 2013, he passed additional board exams to become a Fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology, and we're so grateful to have him back on the show today. Welcome back, Dr. Tims.

Dr. Lucas Tims 1:58

Thanks for having me, Ivelisse. Always good to join you, and always good to talk about integrative oncology and hopefully get some, some messages out there to your audience, which I know is vastly growing day by day, so.

Ivelisse Page 2:13

Good to be here. Well, we're grateful for you. We're so grateful.

Favorite Health Tip

Ivelisse Page 2:16

We always like to start with our guest's favorite health tips. So do you have a new one for us today?

Dr. Lucas Tims 2:22

Yeah, I, as you mentioned, I've done this podcast a few times now, and so I was, I was trying to think of a new one. I think some of the ones I'd done in the past were, gratitude journaling and cold plunges and things like that. And I don't know if I shared this one, but one of the ones that I'm really big on right now in the season of my life is grounding. And, or earthing as some people might call it. But I've really gotten to a, into a good, routine with trying to spend, 10, 15 minutes, kinda early on in the morning with that rising sun with my bare feet on the ground. And there's a lot that goes into it. It's, Some people, can kind of, think that there's not a lot of science behind it, but, there actually has been quite a few published research studies on it showing that it can improve everything from your, neutrophils and lymphocyte levels, your immune system, to lowering inflammation levels and improving oxygen levels. So, I think there's a lot of magic that happens there, and I can attest to it myself. I feel much better the days that I get my grounding in versus the days I don't. And so, I've actually gotten to the point where I've really been prescribing that for a lot of my patients. And I think it's kind of a You know, kind of a little magic elixir in ways and the grounding, the, the doing it early, the intention, the being in the, the connecting with nature on that level. There's a lot of good things that happen there. So been trying encouraging that, en- encourage that more to my patients and also, myself and my loved ones, and I think it's you can't overdo it.

Ivelisse Page 3:58

I agree so much, and I love that it's something that's free. Yeah. It doesn't cost anything to go outside, and see the sun first thing in the morning, put your feet in the grass. And our nervous systems, because of our busy schedules and how crazy stressful our lives can be at certain points, it's so nice, like you're saying, that our body can get grounded and be in a place of a parasympathetic situation where we're calmer, especially at the start of the day. So I really love that. I, I also have a PEMF mat, and I do that every night before bed, and I sleep so much better because I know my nervous system has calmed down from the day. Yeah. So I, I love that you shared that tip, and I love that that one's free. That's a great one.

Dr. Lucas Tims 4:46

Absolutely.

Ivelisse Page 4:47

Absolutely.

Cancer Testing Landscape

Ivelisse Page 4:48

So, there are so many cancer tests that are out now, and it's really been confusing to patients and to individuals to know what test does what, which ones are accurate, and I, I'm just so thankful that you're on this podcast today to help clear up this confusion and bring clarity to all these different tests. There's DATAR, there's Tempus, Signatera, CellCity, Astron Health, and more. Which ones do you guys tend to rely most o- on at Root Causes, and why?

Dr. Lucas Tims 5:21

Yeah, it's a great topic and it's a, a rapidly evolving space. When I first started practicing, there was very few of these tests around, and it seems like every month I learn about a new one that's popped up. So... And, these are, these are tests that, some patients are getting recommended by their conventional oncologist, some of them are getting recommended by their integrative oncologist, some of them they're hearing about through online forums or, other patients or friends. So it's, there's a lot of noise around the tests. And so, I'll do my best to try to provide some clarity, but I think I'd also like to say that, right now, like a lot of these things are still very, fluid and we're, we're learning a lot. A lot of these tests are not FDA approved, which means they're, they're, they're, they're certified in terms of, like, we know that the testing itself is designed to answer certain questions. How well they, the testing does that and, how predictable some of these results actually are in a clinic setting are still, like, there's a lot of fluidity there. So, that is kind of just a general disclaimer. I, I would like to talk about some of the tests that, that we've sort of curated and that we use really, regularly here. And it might be helpful to sort of break them into different buckets where, we're kind of trying to understand what is this test designed to-- what type of information is it designed to give us? Because I don't think people are always clear on that. They just hear about the test, and they, they think all these tests, if they just keep stacking them, eventually they're gonna get this magic recipe that heals their cancer.

Ivelisse Page 7:11

Yes. And, and you know what? Like you said, some of them fall into diagnosis, some fall into treatment selection- Yes or monitoring or something else. So let's start with, what each test is actually doing.

Dr. Lucas Tims 7:22

Yeah.

RGCC and Datar Controversy

Ivelisse Page 7:23

So, there has been some controversy on the RGCC test. RGCT- RGCC and Datar both are supposed to analyze circulating tumor cells-

Dr. Lucas Tims 7:34

Correct

Ivelisse Page 7:34

and offer chemo sensitivity profiling. There has been a lot of criticism on the RGCC test. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Lucas Tims 7:45

I think that the RGCC test gets criticized for a couple different reasons. I think that there's been some sort of independent experiments done, and I know some colleagues that have done split sample testing, meaning they've sent two different samples collected on the same day from the same patient and gotten two different reports on, on that test. So there's some question as far as the accuracy and reliability of their methods. The other part that I think is more a legitimate problem with this type of testing is the setting in which they're doing the testing. So what do I mean by that? A tumor, obviously the tumor that we're trying to treat exists within a human body, okay? And it's subject to all the pressures and balances and dynamics that are happening in real time in the human body, meaning the immune system, hormones, digestion, stress the nervous system the tumor microenvironment. You cannot, at least right now, we do not have any tests that can recreate that environment in a lab setting. So these tests like RGCC and Datar are doing a, a, a version of taking these cells out, i-isolating these circulating tumor cells, and they do it in different ways. But essentially they're trying to isolate the circulating tumor cells, which theoretically would've broken off from the tumor and are in the bloodstream, and they use those in a lab dish, or actually in Datar's case, they do actually what's called an ex vivo testing, meaning it's a little bit more than just the cancer cells in a lab dish. They, they recreate a little bit more of the actual blood environment and tissue environment. Still not to the same level of what you see in the human body. But what they're doing once they get that medium is they're exposing those cancer cells or that ex vivo cancer cell environment to all these different agents. A lot of them are chemotherapies, a lot of them are targeted therapies, some of them are natural products, and they're basically just recording what percentage of those cells are, are killed by that agent, okay? Essentially. I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but this is the main concept of that testing. And so the inherent flaw I was talking about, particularly with RGCC and even Datar, is that a lot of these natural agents, and even some of the conventional agents, they don't always... The mechanism of action is not always a direct killing of the cancer cell. For instance, with a lot of our treatments, mistletoe, which obviously your audience is very familiar or, is very interested in mistletoe, it does not directly kill cancer cells, okay? If you put that in a dish, a lab dish with cancer cells, you're gonna get 0% killing of cancer cells Because how mistletoe works is it stimulates the immune system to respond to the cancer cells. It also does some altering of the tumor microenvironment to favor the immune response as well. It's multifactorial, but it's not directly killing those cancer cells. So what we often see happen with people that get the RGCC test done or even Datar, is they'll get very, very low percentage on mistletoe and lots of the other immune response-type treatments that we do. Even IV vitamin C, which can kill some cancer cells directly, but more so works through the immune system You see very low numbers compared to, say, like a chemotherapy drug. And so inherently they'll say, "Well, mistletoe's not a good fit for your case." And, and they-- it just could not be further from the truth in terms of we've got a test that we are utilizing to ask the wrong question, okay? And this is the, the context that most patients don't get when they have a provider that orders that test for them and doesn't really understand or doesn't take the time to explain that to them and say, "No, look, we still wanna do these more terrain-based therapies." These are not gonna show up as cytotoxic treatments on these tests. That's not why you would use that test. There might be a, a, a really good use case for these tests, especially if patients have failed a few lines of chemotherapy or targeted therapies and they're, they're maybe trying to decide between a couple of other options that are out there, and you might use that chemosensitivity testing to lean one way or the other.

Ivelisse Page 12:35

Yes.

Dr. Lucas Tims 12:35

That's how I see the benefit of those types of tests right now.

Ivelisse Page 12:37

Yeah, and I, I agree 1,000%. My integrative oncologist at the time when I was going through it said the exact same thing, especially with mistletoe. There's so many different properties inside of mistletoe in itself that it's not taking into account. So for example, when you're doing a clinical trial here, even in the conventional setting as we're doing with mistletoe, they're only taking just the mistletoe. They're not taking the human body into effect. They're not taking the individual al- individuality where with mistletoe therapy, it's dosed to that person to what they respond to. And in a clinical trial study setting, it's just one dosage for all the in- the individuals. They're not taking into account someone's diet and their environment and their stress. So it really gives a kind of flawed perspective of how powerful that mistl- that mistletoe therapy really is, like you were sharing. Yeah. But indeed, it does give some great indications when someone's trying to make a decision with, "Goodness, should I do chemotherapy? What type should I do?" It could really help to protect the immune system, knowing that you're gonna shoot for the one that has the strongest opportunity to kill the cancer cells in that setting.

Choosing the Right Test

Ivelisse Page 13:53

So how, how does the Datar... I know the Datar has been, very highly rated. But how, how does the Datar change differ from the Oncostat test that also tests for how different your, your tumor responds to chemotherapies?

Dr. Lucas Tims 14:09

Well, I mean, they're slightly different methods, and like I said Datar uses more of an ex, what we call an ex vivo versus in vitro setting. So you're gonna get a little bit higher level data, I think, from Datar versus an Oncostat or a an RGCC, just from a fundamental understanding of, like, how they do the test. I mean, these are not cheap tests, right? So, it's, I think it's really important for patients to not go select these tests just based off of what they've read online or because they had a friend that, had maybe a, had a good result with it. You really wanna talk to somebody that understands why one test might be better suited for you as an individual in your case versus another one. I'm not saying that OncoStat and RGCC might not ever be a good decision for a patient versus a Datar. And, and it's not to say like, "Oh, Datar's always gonna be better than those other tests." But they're, they're designed to answer slightly different questions. Yes, they are sort of like competitors in terms of, like, the chemosensitivity part of it. But Like I mentioned earlier with that initial disclaimer, we're still very early stages of understanding how to best leverage these tools, these testing tools.

Signatera Explained

Dr. Lucas Tims 15:31

One of the tests that I hope we'll talk about that I've been lucky enough to use in thousands of patients now is the Signatera test. The first 100 or 200 patients that I ran that test in, I, I was really, like, I was skeptical in terms of like, h- can I trust this test? Can I, What, what can I absolutely give patients as a take-home based on this information? But now having run it in over 1,000 patients, I feel really, really confident with the data that I get from that test, and also how to understand the nuances of the test. And I think that that is another layer I'd like to add to the conversation here is that, look, if you've got a provider that has been running the RGCC test for five, 10 years versus someone who maybe just started running a Datar test, I'd go with the one that has the experience with the test. So, that's another layer to this as well, and, and I don't say that to complicate the conversation more, but I think it's important especially as we're still in those early phases of providers getting really comfortable with different tools.

Ivelisse Page 16:42

Yeah, that's one that I actually have done and continue to do the Signatera. I love that it's one of the few that is covered by insurance. I love that they even come to your house for the blood draw, so you don't even have to go to LabCorp or anywhere else to get it done. It is built around that ctDNA and molecular residual disease monitoring, so it is for people who have gone through cancer on the other side and trying to monitor is there anything showing up or bubbling

Tempus vs Signatera

Ivelisse Page 17:10

up. Right. So how, how does that differ from, say, a genomic profiling test like Tempus does?

Dr. Lucas Tims 17:17

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page 17:17

And at what point, do you use each of those in a patient's journey? So kinda share Tempus versus Signatera.

Dr. Lucas Tims 17:25

Yeah, that's, that's a good contrast between those two to talk about because while they're both looking at the cancer at the circulating tumor DNA level- Tempus is a treatment selection test. Signatera is more of what we call a tumor monitoring test. So Signatera, perfect case scenario is you get a, a stage II or stage III colorectal cancer patient, okay? They go in, they have their surgery. Based on the tumor that's removed, they can build a-- the Signatera test. It isolates the cancer cell at this sort of like DNA signature level, and they're able to build a unique test where if you draw blood, you can look for evidence of this DNA, these DNA fragments in the blood. What does that tell us? If there is DNA fragments or this molecular residual disease after they've done a surgery, that means that there is likely still some microscopic disease left in the body, which means you're not done with treatment, right? You can then say, "Look, we need to treat you more systemically at this point to make sure we get that Signatera or that MRD to zero." Because the zero, no matter if you get it originally right after surgery, or let's say after surgery it's positive, and then you do something to get it to zero, both of those lines end up converging long-term towards the same prognosis. So the goal is get, get it to zero by any means possible. But where it's ver- really valuable is if you are that person where it comes back zero after surgery, you can feel confident that the surgery removed all the active disease, okay? And that you likely do not need to do more invasive treatments at that point, okay? So that, that's a real good use case for Signatera. And then moving forward from there, it becomes your best monitoring tool. So we recommend typically that patients, for the first two years after they've had their cancer removed, that they get that Signatera test done every three months Assuming it's negative. If it turns positive, we start watching it monthly usually. But it's negative, we watch it every three months first two years, and then typically after that we'll go to every six months long term. You mentioned that it's, basically a free test. Insurance usually covers it, but if it doesn't cover it, Signatera kinda has this disclaimer that they don't bill the patients out of pocket for it. So very easy test, obviously very affordable and and very, very useful information. The third way you can monit- use it as a monitoring tool is for monitoring response to treatment. And this is where I think that this is, this is what I'm really excited about for Signatera moving forward is, let's say you do get a positive result and you start treating them with something, whether it's chemo or radiation or targeted therapies or IV vitamin C or mistletoe. You can monitor that Signatera number and if it's going down, guess what? You're working on the right things. If it goes to zero, you knocked it out of the park. If it's going up, likelihood is you're not, you're not doing enough or you're not working on the right targets for that, for that cancer. So while it doesn't give us a specific treatment, this is where we'll talk about Tempus, it doesn't say, "Look, you have molecular residual disease. You need to do A, B, and C chemotherapy," or, "You need to do D, E, and F chemotherapy to deal with that." It will tell us after we've deployed a treatment plan if it's working or not. With Tempus, what they're trying to provide in terms of information, they use the same DNA, circulating tumor DNA, but what they're trying to derive is the molecular profile of those cancer cells, meaning what are the druggable mutations or targets that exist in these cancer cells that are driving its growth, and then they match that with the known drugs that we know are the keys that go into that, that keyhole. Okay, so for instance the immunotherapy drugs that people are becoming very familiar with now, like Keytruda and Opdivo, these these checkpoint inhibitors. We know that if on a, say a Tempus test, these, these, these drugs, the way they work is through what's called PD-L or PD-L1 receptor, which is on the surface of the cancer cell and the immune cell, and if it's highly-- if you have a high percentage of PD-L1 or PD-1 on your Tempus test, you know those drugs will theoretically ha- have a high probability of working against that tumor Okay? So that's actually helping you select the right treatment. Signatera's monitoring if you need treatment, and if the treatment's working, and if the cancer has re- has, come back or recurred.

Ivelisse Page 22:44

That's great. Thank you. That's a great clarification and differentiation of, of those two tests.

Events and Symposium Promo

Believe Big 22:50

Thank you for joining us in the Season 5 kickoff episode with Dr. Lucas Tims. Before we continue, a quick reminder, time is running out to join us for two powerful events this fall. The Harvesting Hope Dinner in Colorado is just around the corner on September 25th. Seats are limited, so don't wait to reserve yours. And on October 17th, the Integrative Cancer Symposium comes to the Sheraton in Towson, Maryland, in person or virtual, bringing you real-world strategies from leading experts in integrative oncology. Whether you're a patient, caregiver, or practitioner, these events are built for you, a chance to connect, learn, and turn hope into action. But spots are filling fast, so don't miss your chance. Go to believebig.org/events to sign up today. Now, let's get back to Dr. Tims and Ivelisse.

Astron Second Opinion

Ivelisse Page 23:51

A new one that I just kind of just recently heard of is Astron Health, which they position themselves more as precision oncology as a second opinion than a lab test. How does its role different from the others, and how should patients think about that distinction?

Dr. Lucas Tims 24:09

Yeah, Astron's unique. It's the first kind of commercially available one I've seen where what they're offering is, "Look, we're not actually doing your testing. You go get all your tests done, you get your pathology, and maybe you have a Tempus test, and maybe you do a chemo sensitivity test, and you send us all the information you have gathered on your tumor, and then we will give you our opinion on what you should do about it." Basically, it's a second opinion. So for instance, how does this help some people? Well, we get some people from small-town Texas or small-town Oklahoma, and they go to see their local oncologist at their local cancer center, and they're kind of given this, maybe a very standard of care, vanilla-type protocol. Maybe they've got a really rare tumor. Maybe they've got this, they've identified this unique driver mutation or they, something is making the case very unique. They can send it off to Astron. Astron will look at all that information basically like they were gonna go to MD Anderson or Mayo Clinic or Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of these big cancer centers where you've got the power of all these specialists under one roof, and they're basically gonna give you a version of that second opinion and tumor board review of all these unique, unique pieces of your case. And then, theoretically, you could take that to your local oncologist and they say, "Oh, okay, yeah, this makes sense. We'll treat this a little differently based on, based on their recommendation."

Ivelisse Page 25:40

Yeah. That's great. Yeah, that, that's a great option for patients, especially if they don't have one of the larger hospitals nearby.

Dr. Lucas Tims 25:47

And, and, just along those lines 'cause I always like to tie it back to sort of, the, the terrain and kinda what we're doing here as well. But that's another way that, like, patients can utilize sort of some of the services we do at Root Causes is with y- with more of the terrain type testing. If you don't have someone locally that does the types of integrative oncology treatments that we do here, we can do these, these virtual calls and virtual consults to help you put your, the pieces of your case together as well.

Ivelisse Page 26:16

Yeah, and I'm so grateful that you guys do that. You've done it for hundreds of our patients, and, we've heard such just wonderful comments and responses from the care that they receive at Root Causes. So we're really grateful for you and Dr. Guillory at Root Causes. So, as far as the fit by cancer type and stage, a lot of these are, say, tumors, right? But what about for blood cancers? Are there s- certain tests more informative or specific for certain types of cancers?

Dr. Lucas Tims 26:48

The blood cancers are, are, are kind of their own separate category, and unfortunately right now, all I can say is that all of the tests we've talked about today are really designed with solid tumors in mind. There's a few of them that have sort of separate offerings that might fit a leukemia or lymphoma or myeloma. But for the most part those aren't ones that I'm using regularly in my practice. Luckily because blood cancers do live in the blood, you can get other more standard offered tests that give you information, not necessarily from a maybe a chemo sensitivity standpoint, but as far as, like, Tempus goes and and even, like, with, did we talk about Celluity?

Ivelisse Page 27:33

No. Can you share about that real quick?

Dr. Lucas Tims 27:35

So Celcuity is one where they'll actually, So we talked a little bit about how Tempus might identify these druggable targets, right? These molecular profiles of the tumor. Well, what they can see differently with the Celcuity is which ones are actually the drivers of the disease. Because what you'll see on some of these Tempus reports is you'll get five pages of, like, 150 different genetic mutations, and the key is, like, figuring out which one of those is actually the driver of, of the problem. That's where Celcuity might come in. And to my knowledge, I think that one is available for things like lymphoma and some of these more blood-based as well. So, most of the test offerings that we're talking about are not really positioned to help with leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma. But some of them might be, and this is where, again, work with your oncologist, work with someone that has knowledge in this space. Don't be self-selecting your, your testing offerings. Make sure that you, you ask upfront before the test is ordered, "What question is this gonna help us answer? And what information, what useful information might we gain from ordering this test?"

Ivelisse Page 28:54

Yeah. I, I that, thank you, 'cause I think those are some questions that sometimes, you're in the moment and you're speaking to oncologists, and you're overwhelmed with all these different options and everything being thrown at you. But especially with these tests that are out-of-pocket, it's really important to know the what and the why so that you know that you are, actually getting the right one for your stage or your portion of your treatment history or where you are in the treatment process. So thank you for sharing that.

Final Advice and Terrain Testing

Ivelisse Page 29:23

In closing, if you had one piece of advice for someone navigating this landscape of testing options- Mm-hmm what would it be, and, and what would your advice be to them?

Dr. Lucas Tims 29:36

Well, like I just said, like make sure that you understand why you're getting the-- why the test is being ordered and work with your, your oncologist or your provider there. I think, the-- what I found to be most useful across the board is, are more the monitoring types of tests. Now, for some patients that are more advanced stage and running out of options, some of the other tests make a lot of sense too. But across the board, a test like a Signatera is gonna be very, very valuable to help you understand where you're at and, and monitor the disease in real time. And then, the other piece that we didn't get into too much here just because it wasn't necessarily the focus, but the terrain testing, right? So a lot of these tests that we're talking about today, these are all telling us what's going on with the tumor, okay? But we know the other side of the ball, the defensive side of the ball, right, is involving what's going on in the terrain, the tumor microenvironment. These tests do not answer those questions for you. So working with an integrative oncologist, a naturopathic oncologist that knows how to do really good terrain testing, is going to exponentially improve your ability to respond to whatever the actual treatments are being recommended based on these tumor tests that we're talking about. So don't leave the terrain testing out of it either. You want both optimally if you're looking for that magic formula that's gonna work best for you.

Ivelisse Page 31:00

Yeah, and for those who are not familiar with integrative oncology, can you explain what are those terrain testing?

Dr. Lucas Tims 31:08

Yeah. So, I recommend everybody read Dr. Nasha Winters' "Metabolic Approach to Cancer." She does a great job of, of sort of painting the picture of what we talk about or what we're, what we mean with the terrain that impacts cancer, and she has a great way that she breaks it into these 10 key categories. But we're basically testing things like inflammation, how's the immune system working, toxins, circulation, hormones, gut health, nervous system, stress, all these other things that go into making up the, the soil or the terrain in which these cancer cells are f- are, either finding it easy or hard to grow in, right? 'Cause that's how we can put pressure from the defensive side on these cancer cells.

Ivelisse Page 31:58

Yes. Well, that was a really great explanation. Thank you, Dr. Tims, for joining us and giving us such great insight into all of these tests and bringing clarity. Even I have a lot better clarity on all the ones that we sh- talked about today because of your help. So thank you for what you do for our patients. Thank you for educating us today and for your time.

Dr. Lucas Tims 32:21

My pleasure, Ivelisse. Anytime.

Ivelisse Page 32:30

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