[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: My name is Nancy Farrow, also known as Mama Lu, and I'm the founder of Epic Experience.
Epic Experience mission is to empower adult cancer survivors and thrivers to live beyond cancer.
I hope that as you listen to campfires of hope living beyond cancer, you find hope, healing and empowerment.
Through stories and education, we aim to guide those impacted by cancer and more importantly, offer love and support to anyone
[00:00:41] Speaker C: out there who needs it.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: This is beyond cancer.
[00:01:15] Speaker D: Hello, everyone. This is Gail, AKA Sunshine. April is esophageal cancer awareness month and Today we have Dr. Victoria Lee and Jeff Thomas from Lucid Diagnostics joining us around the campfire to share their professional and personal experiences related to esophageal cancer. We want to welcome both of you, Jeff and Dr. Lee, around the campfire.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Great to be here, sunshine.
[00:01:39] Speaker D: Thank you. I am going to start by asking you both to tell us a little bit about yourself.
I always ask people to include one fun fact.
Jeff, I'm going to start with you.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: My name is Jeff Thomas.
I'm from northeastern Pennsylvania. I grew up in Wilkes first Scranton area.
Worked a few different jobs before I started my own business in 1989. Ran an office equipment company there until just before COVID I sold it. I had married two boys, 31 and 36.
Once a Cornell grad, once a Westchester graduate, pretty successful kids.
And fun fact about me would be that Mark Cuban is actually my fraternity brother. Yeah.
[00:02:32] Speaker D: Wow. When I went that is a for I have never heard that one before.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: When I had gone to the University of Pittsburgh, which is where I graduated, pledged a py lamp to five fraternity and I was a freshman pledge.
Mark was finishing up his sophomore year and he went on to transfer to Indiana of course after that. But I did have occasion to meet and interact and drink with Mark Cuban many years ago, that is. I've got a lot more fun facts, but I figured I'd lead with that.
[00:03:02] Speaker D: That one's perfect.
Dr. Lee, how about you?
[00:03:06] Speaker A: So I'm Victoria Lee and I am the chief medical officer at Lucid Diagnostics. My background is actually in vascular surgery. That's what I was originally board certified in, but I've been doing clinical research for the past six years.
As far as my background, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, but I've been living in New York City ever since medical school.
Unlike Jeff, who has very accomplished children, my two boys will never go to college because they have four legs and fur. So they're just, they're not, they're not going to be making. They're not going to do to any Ivy League school.
[00:03:38] Speaker D: And that's okay. We love them.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: My fun fact is a lot more boring than Jess. I actually hate mochi and marshmallows because of the texture.
So I don't often those marshmallows over campfires.
[00:03:53] Speaker D: Oh, and that will come back. Well, then we'll have to think of something else. I'll think of something else when I get to the end.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:02] Speaker D: Dr. Lee, I'm gonna. I'm wondering if you can give our listeners a brief overview of esophageal cancer, like the most common risk factors, early warning signs and things like that.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Esophageal cancer is one of those cancers that a lot of people don't really think about that often. There's a big five that we hear about a lot. Colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, breast, lung even, as well as prostate cancer in some cases for men.
But with esophageal cancer, what people don't realize is that it really is one of the most fatal cancers here in the US as far as lethality. Among those patients who get diagnosed with esophageal cancer is probably the second most lethal, just tied with hepatobiliary. So when people get diagnosed, their chances of survival beyond five years is, is very, very low.
[00:04:51] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: And you would think that with a cancer that has such a high mortality rate that we would be talking more about it, but unfortunately it's just not something that's very mainstream.
Yeah. The question about risk factors is very, is a very good one because there's been guidelines published since 1998 from the American Gastro, the American College of Gastroenterology that has described the high risk population for esophageal cancer as well as a precursor condition that's often known as Barrett's esophagus or metaplasia and dysplasia. And the risk factors are well established. Unfortunately, these risk factors include things that are quite common like male sex, white race, patients who are over the age of 50, obesity patients who have a history of tobacco smoking, as well as patients who have a family history of bar esophagus or esophageal adenocaroma, and a first degree relative. And so as you can imagine, obesity has been climbing for quite a while.
Being male is pretty common, about 50% of the population.
[00:05:58] Speaker D: Population.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And then white race is still the dominant race here in the US So those are. It's really much more common than people think.
[00:06:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
What are the.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Actually, I forgot the most important one because we almost Think that it's intuitive.
The one that I really missed the punchline is that gastroesophageal reflux disease is known as being the pathologic source of why the cells in the distal esophagus change and can cause esophageal adenocarcinoma, which is the most common type of esophageal cancer in the US and it's that constant reflux of gastric and duodenal contents that traumatize the distal esophageal cells and can cause them to change in a response to that exposure that can eventually lead to cancer.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: And so basically, we're saying acid reflux could be an early warning sign, but it's also such a common thing that people deal with, right?
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: It's so common that I almost forgot that it was a risk factor, even though it's the most important one.
[00:07:00] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Goes to tell you.
[00:07:02] Speaker D: Yeah.
So, Jeff, how does esophageal cancer typically get diagnosed, and then what are the challenges in catching it early?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Well, I can only speak from the patient side, the business end of the stethoscope, so to speak.
I can tell you that, generally speaking, people go when they experience something called dysphagia, which is difficulty swallowing.
In my case, I had some fatigue beforehand, and I had some other issues with discolored stools and things like that. But what made me finally go to the doctors was I went and I kept getting food stuck in my throat, and I was running for a school board once, and a hot dog got stuck in my throat. When I was talking to some would be voters the next day, I went to the doctors, and they set me up for a scope. So difficulty swallowing, I would say, is the first and most common symptom. I would tell you also that one of the difficulties with this cancer is that over 50% of the people that get diagnosed with esophageal cancer do so when they present with difficulty swallowing. Okay. The problem with that is when they get diagnosed at that stage, over half of them are already stage four when they can't curative intent. And that's what contributes to the.
The high mortality rate, really.
[00:08:30] Speaker D: So is there.
Is there a place where it usually goes first when it does metastasize, or is it just kind of anywhere?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Dr. Lee, that's really wick.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: So with GI cancers, there are common areas where they will metastasize when we talk about where it goes first. So I actually want to walk that back a little bit to what Jeff was saying, which is Esophageal adenocarcinoma is often asymptomatic in its early stages. So when we talk about localized stages of disease where it hasn't yet spread outside of the esophagus, those patients are very uncommonly diagnosed because there's not a lot of symptoms that would prompt them to go see someone and get an endoscopy done. And so those are the patients where it might not have spread by the time it's become locally invasive or even spread to the lymph nodes or widely medicated static. By that point, the original tumor is usually quite large, and that's why it's causing symptoms like dysphasia. With these GI tumors, obviously common places where they could metastasize include the liver.
But lymph nodes are actually, as some people might know who are listening to the podcast and are familiar with cancer, lymph nodes are usually the first place that cancer will spread. That's where we call regional disease prior to metastatic disease.
[00:09:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: But even once they've spread to the lymph nodes, even if they have not spread to distant organs, the likelihood of curing a patient with esophageal adenocarcinoma becomes very, very low. And even in patients with much more localized disease of five years, survival is still about 50%.
Because on initial diagnosis, it may seem as if it may be localized. But for patients with what we call T1B cancer, where it's just seems to have spread through a few layers of the esophagus, the likelihood of having spread to lymph nodes without actually knowing it is quite substantial.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:10:32] Speaker D: So, Dr. Lee, back to you. How. How does your personal experience influence the way you communicate with patients, doctors, and the broader community about esophageal cancer?
[00:10:43] Speaker A: With esophageal cancer, my experience has primarily been academic because I've been working in research, as with lucid diagnostics, as far as helping to improve the diagnosis of the precursor condition, which is Barrett's esophagus.
And we really are targeted as Barrett's esophagus because what a lot of people don't know is that Barrett's, when identified, can be very effectively treated using endoscopic therapies that can avoid the progression to cancer. And so it's one of the few cancers where you have a well defined precursor condition that you can actually do something about. And in treating it, you can avoid the likelihood of ever developing cancer. And I think that really drives the narrative there are malignancies out there where there isn't a well defined precursor condition. So the idea of being able to screen for it is essentially impossible to get pancreatic cancers or some of these other malignancies. There's really very few cancers that we talk about in general conversation where we're really focusing on precancer detection rather than just trying to detect an earlier stage, which, as I mentioned, with esophageal idle carcinoma, is not very effective because even those early stage patients don't have a great prognosis.
[00:11:57] Speaker D: And are you saying Barrett's B A R R E T T?
Is that what it, what would the, the technical definition be, I guess, of Barrett's esophagus?
[00:12:07] Speaker A: So the technical definition is that it's essentially a metaplastic condition.
So what it is, it's a condition of cellular change. As I mentioned before, these patients who have constant reflux that the distal esophagus, the esophagus is not really made to deal with the contents of your stomach, the low ph, those digestive enzymes that come from the duodenum. And so the cells are not well equipped to really withstand those types of exposures.
But our body is very adaptive. So if you have constant reflux and your esophageal cells are being exposed to these components on a regular basis, the cells will actually try and change to be much more similar to intestinal cells so that it can really adapt to those exposures and not be facing this damage all the time. And so that initial change is what we call metaplasia. That's. That's just cellular change. That's rather adaptive in fashion. But as you can imagine, once cells start to change and they continue to be exposed to these triggers, the change can continue.
And that's where we get to something called dysplasia, where the cells start using some of their normal checks and balances, they still, they're no longer entirely normal, and the likelihood of them undergoing further change that can progress to cancer is much higher. So Barrett's esophagus, we talk about it often as one entity, but there's really distinct stages within this disease process that exists on a spectrum. And depending on where someone is within the spectrum will alter how we manage them. But the key is that no matter where they are on the spectrum for ferrets, there's something we can do to help monitor or treat and support them and try to avoid progression of cancer.
[00:13:55] Speaker D: So, yeah, that makes sense. So, Jeff, I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about your personal journey as a esophageal cancer survivor, and how did your experience. So that would be question one. Part two is how did your experience inspire the work you're now doing with lucid diagnostics?
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Well, thank you for the question.
I was diagnosed when I was 50 years old, a few days after my 50th birthday.
Owned an office equipment company in northeastern Pennsylvania. Things were going pretty well. My kids were growing up, had everything. Everybody told you you should have had the big McMansion, all the other stuff.
But I was having fatigue, difficulty swallowing. Things like that. Kept going to my doctor, who happened to be a friend of mine. Used to work out all the time. I did P90X. I ran, I lifted weights. I was pretty healthy.
So when I went, the doctor would, you know, generally go to the path of least resistance. Well, you better just change your diet. Diet, eat more protein. I don't think you have any. Anything wrong with you. So I did that a few times, went back to him with the difficulty swallowing, and I told him about the hot dog that got stuck in my throat. He said, well, we better get you scoped. So set up a meeting with another doctor who is a friend of mine and the gastroenterologist. And I went to get the scope, and he said, well, I have an appointment Monday and an appointment a week from Monday. And I said, what do you think? And he looked at me and he said, well, you don't have cancer.
You probably have esophagitis. I said, okay. So felt pretty good about that. I mean, you don't have cancer. So I took the appointment a week later. I was being pretty cavalier about it. I was texting everybody from my gurney about going to play golf. Afterwards, I went in for the endoscopy, and I woke up in a dimly lit room with a table next to me in a box of Kleenex. And the nurse was standing by the door, and she said, don't move. The doctor wants to talk to you. And then they brought my nephew in, who had given me a ride to the appointment.
And the doctor came in and he said, I don't know how to tell you this, but you have esophageal cancer.
And from then on, I mean, my whole body went into fight or flight. Flight mode.
I was extremely angry, extremely anxious. I'm not ashamed to say that. Yeah, I went. I said, well, don't you have to check? He said, well, there's some things we have to check. But he said, I've seen enough of it to know. So I said, what do I do? And they set me up with a CAT scan that day. I went in, I got a CAT scan later that afternoon, found out that I did have a 5 centimeter tumor at the GI. Junction.
Junction. And they. The next morning is when they called me with the results. And he said, I hate to tell you this, but it looks like it's in your liver and your lung, too.
And, you know, I went from being perfectly healthy the day before with maybe some esophagitis, to having somebody tell me that I might have metastasized, metastatic and potentially fatal esophageal cancer. And I said, what do I do now? And he said, you got to go to an oncologist. So I went to an oncologist that day. I'm not a shrinking violet. So I took full responsibility for my own health care. And I.
I got. I managed to get the appointments pretty quickly and walked in and my doctor said, well, he said, you definitely, definitely have esophageal cancer, but I'm not sure that it's in your liver and your lung. So they did a PET scan, which is a little bit more comprehensive that the result came back the next day, and it was not, in fact, cancer in my liver and lung.
So that doctor, really smart guy, Dr. Bruce Saveman, Yale grad, said, you have a puncher's chance.
He said, you have stage three esophageal cancer.
You know, you should get your chemo and your radiation.
If you're a surgical candidate, you should get the surgery, and then we'll.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: We'll take it from there.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: So started a course of radiation and chemo.
I think it was 28 days of radiation Monday through Friday, and then chemo once a week. Taxol and carboplatin for five weeks. Then the deal was that I was going to get a. And it's an ultrasound.
What is it called? I'm sorry, Laparoscopic surgery from the outside.
And what they did there was they. They drilled, they put six holes in my torso, and they looked at my
[00:18:36] Speaker C: esophagus from the outside.
During that, they were going to wash my organs.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: And they said if they found one cancer cell, that I wasn't going to be a surgical candidate. So had my surgery. Wow.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: I had that test down at Fox
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Chase, which is now Temple, and they came back, and I was fortunate enough to not have any cancer cells in my chest cavity.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: So I became a surgical candidate.
I had six weeks off between the completion of the treatment and the surgery. So took the family to Florida. We hid. We did things as a Family and
[00:19:16] Speaker B: went in for the surgery. Before I went in for the surgery,
[00:19:18] Speaker C: I dropped my son off at the airport because he was doing a semester abroad in Australia.
I didn't want to have anything interfere with. With their lives as this went on. And so I went in for the surgery. I had the esophagectomy. The surgery was long. The doctor told me it was largely because I was in such good shape that it was going to keep me under for as long as I was stable.
And then he was able to make more informed decisions about where to cut and what to do and what lymph nodes to take, etc. So my first surgery was 16 hours. That went pretty well. The next day, I have a Facebook picture somewhere of me putting a big thumbs up and everything's fine. And. And then right after that, I developed a. An incredibly long list of complications. I developed a. A leak at the anastomosis, which is where they pulled up the esophagus and reattached it.
Pulled up the stomach, excuse me, and reattached it where the esophagus used to be.
Well, that started leaking and so I developed a thoracic infection. Two collapsed lungs, pneumonia.
[00:20:26] Speaker D: Oh, gosh.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: And they put a stent in to try and see if the leak would heal on its own. It didn't, in fact, heal on its own.
So I had to submit to another emergency surgery. And the first surgery was minimally invasive, where they put six holes in me and then took out the esophagus by a 4 and a half inch incision on the side.
Well, the emergency surgery to repair it was a thoracotomy, which meant that they cut right along the back and did what they call an open repair.
So they did that. And I had still had many problems. I aspirated during that surgery.
So I ended up on a ventilator with pneumonia, like I said. And they put me in a. An induced coma to keep me in one spot until they could figure out what antibiotic might work.
And so they did eventually find an antibiotic that worked.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I recovered.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: When I recovered, I got the pathology, which is what everybody waits for. Right?
[00:21:35] Speaker D: Right, exactly.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: And they came back and they said that seven out of my 17 lymph nodes that they harvested had tested positive for cancer and that I was, in fact, going to need continued treatment.
So I went back and I had to have six more months of conventional chemotherapy, FOLFOX, which is, I guess, a traditional GI chemotherapy not known to be super effective with seven out of 17 lymph nodes.
It didn't really look like the picture wasn't.
[00:22:13] Speaker D: That wasn't good. Yeah.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: And I'm fortunate in that I completed the, the treatment and the cancer just never came back. In May 9th, celebrate my 15th year.
[00:22:26] Speaker D: Congratulations.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:22:28] Speaker D: Wow. How did that whole journey lead you to lucid diagnostics? And that's.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Wow.
It led me so, so many different places. And, and can I share a few of those first?
Not, not places per se, but when you talked about how out effects.
[00:22:48] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: How you deal with people. I used to go around looking forward to the next conversation. Every conversation I had with somebody, I was thinking about the next conversation I was going to have with somebody else. And now, especially in the cancer recovery world, I realize how important it is for these people to talk to somebody who's listening. So what it taught me was to stay in the moment, to stay in the moment with the time I have left. I'm trying to be present for all the conversations that I have with everybody. It's an insult to them if I'm not.
And, and frankly, it's an insult to my survivorship if I'm not. And that's, that's one thing.
[00:23:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: That it taught me. Now, getting back to how it led me to lucid diagnostics, that's another story.
There was something online three years ago about lucid diagnostics having some very good results with their test.
And the, the press release didn't mention anything about survivors. So I composed and sent what can only be described as a snarky email diagnostics, saying, hey, you know, you guys are really kind of sanitizing this. This is, you know, this is not as clean cut and easy as it. As you guys are making it sound.
And I sent it to the generally general delivery mailbox at Lucid and I got a call from Sean o', Neill, the CEO, and he said, hey, interesting letter.
And he, he wanted to talk to me. So I had a conference call with him. Two days later, I had a conference call with the sales team. With their sales team or part of their sales team. And then a few weeks later, they invited me to talk in Hartford, Connecticut to the eastern region sales team.
It's just kind of a positive proof source for cancer survivorship and I'm very fortunate to have the platform that they provided me with.
And I don't, I don't take the privilege lightly. So that's, that's how it led me to Sean. And I have to say this. And, and I've never met a more fun, more committed group of people than the People at Lucid Diagnostics. So.
[00:25:05] Speaker D: Well, let me ask you one more question before I move on. So what is your role? What are you doing with lucid diagnosis?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Well, lucid is one of the things that I do in the cancer survivorship community.
What I'm excited about with lucid, though, is that this is not early detection. This is cancer prevention, which is better than early detection every time.
And what I'd like to do is I would like to play a small but important part of carrying that message to everybody who has gerd, everybody who has a family of history, history of gerd, everybody who has those seven risk factors or three of the seven risk factors. I want to be the person to say, look, here's an opportunity to use this simple, non invasive test. You get in and out in five weeks.
Five, five minutes. Excuse me. You get the results in two to three weeks.
And here's what people worry about when they go to get an endoscopy, right? They worry about getting, getting put to sleep. They worry about missing a day of work. And from the time they get referred for this endoscopy until the time they go, so many of them talk themselves out of their symptoms and they say, you know what? Yeah, I know that they referred me for the endoscopy, but I don't think I really need it. I think things are getting better. Right.
Very important thing to remember. So we talked to some, I've talked to some gastroenterologists and they say, well, you know, if they need a scope, I refer for a scope. Well, my question is, of the people you refer, how many people go?
Because those are the people that we're worried about. Those are the people that I want to talk to because I put off testing for the very same reasons. Didn't want to get put to sleep, didn't want to miss a day of work. And I only decided to go when, when I really had to.
And so I think there's a message there that I'm qualified to deliver based on my personal experience.
[00:27:05] Speaker D: And absolutely, yeah, definitely.
Dr. Lee, how does Lucid's technology help with early detection or improved outcomes specifically for esophageal cancer patients? And actually, this is a question I want to also note. Does lucid diagnostics specifically work with esophageal cancer or is it a wider range? Because I don't know if I've actually asked that.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Both are great questions. For the first one, I feel as if Jeff's done a really great job at answering a big part of that with the guidelines that exist. They recommend Barrett's esophagus evaluation in hopes of preventing esophageal adenocarcinoma among these patients with well defined risk factors, chronic GERD and three or more of the other six that we had described. And as Jeff mentioned, a lot of these patients who are high risk for developing either the pre cancer baron's esophagus or cancer often feel good. They, you know, being a male is a symptom. Being white, you have no symptoms associated with that. We now have such good acid suppressive medications that you can get over the counter that even patients with reflux can live their lives without feeling any sort of burden from their disease.
So the likelihood of a patient who's otherwise feeling well and who doesn't understand really the link between esophageal pre cancer and esophageal cancer and these risk factors, they're not very likely to undergo an invasive diagnostic procedure like an EGD purely for screening purposes. And so we had to bridge the gap as far as improving access and making it as easy and tolerable for patients as possible. And that's where lucid diagnostics comes in with the ERD test, which is a biomarker based test that can be collected with a swallow cell collection device in the office. And it really does take about two minutes to do the cell collection. And we run the samples in our lab and like Jeff mentioned, the ordering physic, get the results back within, within about two weeks and then can use those results to determine whether or not the patient is free and clear. If they're negative for our test, the likelihood of them having some underlying Barrett or esophageal cancer is incredibly low. So they don't have to undergo an egd. But if they come back positive, that means we've detected, you know, some, some cellular changes that indicate that something's happening that needs to really be evaluated. And those patients need to go on for an EGD to visualize the ESO and biopsies to help stage it.
And as far as compliance, you know, if a patient gets a positive biomarker based test, that's, that's pretty actionable. We've done studies to show that it really does impact patient behavior and the compliance rate jumps from maybe 40% to over 85%. So it's not just beneficial as far as access, it's beneficial as far as convincing patients to take ownership of their health and to really follow through with, with that diagnostic evaluation.
[00:30:10] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:30:11] Speaker D: Can you share success stories or data that show the impact that Lucid Diagnostics this test has had.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yeah, we do have some success stories that we can describe to be HIPAA compliant. I'm obviously not going to get too many details, but there's one that is actually.
It's one of my favorites because it really does portray the typical patient that we really want to help.
And this was a patient who had had long standing reflux. And he had a fantastic primary care provider who's so on top of everything. She was aware of the risk factors for Barrett's esophagus. She knew that it was a precursor condition to esophageal adenal carcinoma. She knew that he had multiple risk factors in addition to his reflux that would have warranted evaluation. And she'd been recommending that he undergo an HD for about five years. And he would say no every single time. He's like, no, I don't want to do that. I feel good.
And she would pester him at every. Every annual visit to say, hey, you should get your egd.
Then when eel Guard became available, you know, she's. When we were talking to her about the technology, actually at that conversation, she's like, I already know the first patient that I want to offer this to because he's been refusing an EGD for years.
I really want him to get it. I'm worried about his risk.
Maybe if I can offer a test that he can do in my office, a place that he's comfortable coming to regularly and I collect the cells because he trusts me and we have a really strong relationship together, he'll at least be willing to do this. And he was. He trusted her. He's like, if I only have to go to your office to get the cell collection and you're the one doing it, no stranger is going to be touching me, then, sure, I'll. I'll let you do this test. And he came back positive.
And because he came back positive, she's like, now you really need to go get that egd. And she finally convinced him. And it was very fortunate because he had high grade dysplasia, which is the stage where they're really at the highest risk of eventually developing cancer.
The annual progression rate from high grade dysplasia to cancer can be anywhere between 8 to almost 12% per year. These patients really should be treated as soon as they're diagnosed.
So he underwent endoscopic eradication therapy. It was successful, and he's now been followed up for a few years. And he is disease Free and he's doing fantastic. So that's really, it really highlights the type of patients where you can have these near misses. And we consider that really someone who probably would have developed cancer a few years down the line had he continued in the same pattern that he had before.
[00:32:47] Speaker D: Well, yeah, that's the perfect illustration of how easy it is too. I mean he was already in the office, he was already used to going there. It was just a matter of taking it changed his life, I'm sure.
Jeff, I'm wondering how lucid diagnostics works with physicians and healthcare systems to implement those tools. For example, this test
[00:33:09] Speaker B: right now, my understanding is the administering the test is still something being done with lucid employees currently.
I think the goal is to take this right into the primary care physician's office, be able to train people in all the primary care physicians offices so that they can administer the test in the PCP setting so that people don't need to get a referral to go to see somebody else to get the Test. And like Dr. Lee said, they can do it feeling comfortable with their existing physician. And I think that is, is the long term goal. And lucid is not there yet.
Once we get a critical mass in terms of testing, you know, the hope is that we're going to get there. Dr. Lee could maybe expand on that, but that's my answer.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: People often think when they hear cell collection that it's something that's pretty complicated, but fortunately it's not. The cell collection devices of FDA 510K cleared device and it's almost entirely made of silicone, so it's very easy for the patients to swallow. We blow up a balloon which is what collects the cells on these bridges on the surface of the balloon. So it's very atraumatic. As Jeff mentioned, we have a clinical team on lucid diagnostics team where their nurses, NPs, they can do the cell collections on the ordering provider's behalf based on whether it's their personal preference or if it's just a better fit for their workflow. But we also have brick and mortar locations in some cities where there's been a lot more adoption of the test where the physicians can order the test and we can schedule the patients to come to our brick and mortar location to get the self sample collected.
Or in the third case, we have situations like the one I just described where the physician has been trained to do the cell flexion or herself or himself and she can do it in her own Office or her NPs or PAs or medical assistants can do it. So there's a lot of ways that it can be implemented in the real world. Although as Jeff mentioned, the most popular option is a lot of physicians, especially given how busy they are just seeing their patients day to day, will often opt to schedule patients to get the self collection done with us.
And one of the things that's been happening even within the last few years as far as screening events is there are sometimes departments or populations of patients where they're at higher risk of developing cancer, especially esophageal adenocarcinoma being one of them, based on their exposures or other just demographic and clinical characteristics of those populations where their employers will do screening events because they recognize that their patients or their employees are at higher risk. And our team can then send someone there for those screening events to support the cell collections.
[00:36:05] Speaker D: Wow, that's great. I mean, really, that they've. They've been able to develop something that's relatively easy and effective and accurate is.
Is amazing. Well, I'd like to ask both of you the next question. So I'm wondering if there's anything else that I haven't specifically asked you about that you would want to share with someone listening.
And Jeff, I'll start with you.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: What I think I would like to talk about again is the astounding rise in esophageal cancer in the medical community in the United States. It's grown over 400% over the last 40 years with no silver bullet treatment on the horizon. And Dr. Lee, you can calibrate me on this, but I don't believe anybody is going to turn around tomorrow and say we've cured esophageal cancer. So the only way to impact the 20,500 deaths a year from esophageal cancer in the United States is to get to the people before they develop the disease.
This is where I think we can be effective with this product at this point in time.
So I have a real sense of urgency with regard to taking this message to the right people. And it's so. It's growing so quickly that I'm. That I shudder to think about where we may be ten years from now.
And that. That would be my parting thought.
[00:37:30] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: As it were.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Dr. Lee, I think Jeff articulated it really well, the focus for this disease status, ocular adenocarcinoma. Even though we talk about the cancer, unlike with other cancers, the focus shouldn't be early cancer detection, but we really are talking about prevention and as a, as a goal. You know, Jeff, Myself and the rest of our team, at the end of the day, Lucid Diagnostics is a. Their CEO. Our CEO is a physician. There's a bunch of us on the executive team who are physicians, and our number one priority is really patient care. And in this case, the goal is to prevent these patients from having to get cancer at all.
Jeff is an amazing story in that he was strong, he was healthy, he survived. But the vast majority of patients who get diagnosed with this type of cancer do not. But we now have a tangible target that we can identify that is a precursor that we can effectively treat. Had it been 20 years ago, without these endoscopic eradication therapies, it'd be a very different conversation, but at least the advances have occurred where there's great treatment options for Barrett's esophagus. So there's no reason not to get tested, and there's no reason not to try and identify this condition before it ever becomes cancer.
[00:38:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
Wow, that's. That's exciting. Developments that are life saving, literally.
So that's wonderful. Well, I always end with a little lighter note. And Dr. Lee, I'm going to have to ask you a different question based on your earlier comment about marshmallows, but what I always end with is marshmallows over a campfire. Slow and steady or flaming crispy. And, Jeff, I'll start with you.
What's your preference?
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Let's burn them.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: Let's burn.
[00:39:16] Speaker D: Just burn them down.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Blow it. Blow it out, and then burn the top of your mouth.
[00:39:22] Speaker D: Wow, you're very specific.
Okay, so, Dr. Lee, you don't do marshmallows, I'm guessing at all.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: That's why I would vote to burn them as well.
[00:39:30] Speaker D: You would as well.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: So just set them on fire.
[00:39:32] Speaker D: Okay. Well, there you go.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: All of the marshmallows should be burned.
[00:39:35] Speaker D: All right, so we have a unanimous decision here to burn all of the marshmallows ones. Well, thank you both so much. This has been educational for me. I. I didn't know about lucid diagnostics or the work they're doing or the. The alarming statistics about how fast, how quickly esophageal cancer is growing, so I appreciate you both being here. Jeff, thank you for sharing your personal story as well as your insights and involvement in lucid diagnostics. I really appreciate that.
And, Dr. Lee, thank you also for sharing your expertise. I appreciate it.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:40:10] Speaker D: And to those of you who are listening, until the next time we gather around the campfire, keep living beyond cancer.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Campfires of Hope Living Beyond Cancer. For more information about Epic Experience and our programs, or to donate, please visit our
[email protected] Music for this podcast is provided by Moonshiner Collective. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us so we can share our story with more people. Also, be sure to subscribe wherever you get podcasts so you'll know when new episodes are released. We hope you come back and join us for our next episode.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Time.
