UNLEASH®
More than 285,000 Americans will die of cancer in 2025..
Present oncology “standard of care” is focused on surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and/or hormonal therapy, or combinations of these therapies. Although survival rates are improving dramatically for certain cancers, there are many patients for whom these methods provide no improvement or may extend life for only a few months. Recent gains in survival rates are due largely to earlier detection.
As the baby boomer population ages into the peak cancer years (age 65+), the incidence of cancer is expected to rise. Better therapeutic methods are needed. Immunotherapeutic drugs are beginning to appear,. showing good results for some cancers.
The UNLEASH™ medical device technology is part of a non-drug line of immunotherapy research with potential advantages over drug therapies.
Thompson’s UNLEASH™ device is a selective molecular adsorption column. Mounted on an apheresis machine, it is used in a procedure similar to kidney dialysis. After separation from whole blood, the patient’s plasma is filtered through the UNLEASH column which contains engineered proteins. These proteins “adsorb” or bind to other, targeted, proteins and retain them in the column. The plasma is returned to the whole blood, minus the target protein, and re-infused into the patient’s vein.