Cancer Overview

Cancer is a multi-faceted disease with numerous subsets and types. However, the basic cellular process that characterizes the property of nearly all cancer cells is their ability to grow uncontrollably. Normal cells of our body, such as blood cells, intestinal epithelial cells, epidermal cells of the skin, as well as others, also undergo self-renewal growth, but in a controlled manner. Both normal cell growth and cell death in healthy organisms are tightly regulated processes. Breaking free of this regulation causes cancer cells to grow uncontrollably and this is clinically evidenced as a lump or mass in a particular organ. When the mass breaks the barrier of the organ in which it is growing and travels to distal organs via the blood stream and thereby lodging in a distal organ, the process of metastases sets in. The metastases of cancer cells is the major challenge of cancer prevention and therapy.

It is the goal of the Founders of AVT that the therapeutic agents used will first eliminate the cancer and then the immunotherapeutic peptides will be able to re-educate or reprogram the immune system to recognize micro-metastatic previously undetected cancer cells and eliminate them, thereby eliminating the odds of recurrence and or metastases. Metastases is a primary killer in the case of indolent cancers such as that of the prostate. AVT’s scientific strategy is applicable to the development of vaccines and treatment modalities for not only the cure of cancers, but of infectious diseases as well.