Episode 2: Unlocking Nature's Secrets in Cancer Treatment and Immune Support with Dr. John Hall, PhD

Join Sylvie & Victor on this interesting episode as we look into the latest advances in cancer research. With special guest Dr. John Hall, PhD, Director of Research, we learn about how plants and natural extracts can help fight cancer. 

What You'll Discover

• Discoveries in Nature: Learn about the initial findings related to Pao pereira, Rauwolfia Vomitoria, and Golden Leaf Ginkgo extracts, and their significance in cancer research. 

• Research Summaries: A concise overview of the foundation's research on various cancers, including prostate, ovarian, and pancreatic cancer. 

• Cancer Stem Cell Exploration: An insight into the ongoing cancer stem cell research. 

• The Power of Short RNA: Discussion on how short RNA fragments can aid in immune support.

 • Latest Findings: Exciting new research showing the anti-cancer effects of Golden Leaf Ginkgo extract. 

This episode not only highlights the remarkable strides made in cancer research but also emphasizes nature's invaluable contributions to this ongoing battle. For further information on the topics discussed, be sure to visit our website at www.beljanski.org/podcast. 

Join us as Sylvie and Victor guide us through nature's abilities in treating cancer. Listen, learn, and rediscover hope in the fight against cancer - https://www.beljanski.org/beljanski-cancer-talk-show/episode-2-unlocking-natures-secrets-in-cancer-treatment-immune-support/

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Chapters

• 0:00 On This Episode
• 0:33 Introducing Dr. John Hall and Sylvie Beljanski
• 1:16 The Legacy of Dr. Mirko Beljanski and the Foundation's Mission
• 3:01 The Science Behind Natural Compounds Fighting Cancer
• 5:21 Exploring the Anti-Cancer and Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Natural Extracts
• 15:37 Prostabel: A Natural Boost for Men's Prostate Health
• 16:45 The Foundation's Role in Integrative and Alternative Medicine
• 19:37 Advancements in Cancer Stem Cell Research
• 21:26 In-depth Research on Ovarian and Pancreatic Cancer
• 24:27 The Role of Short RNA Fragments in Supporting the Immune System
• 29:32 Introducing Womabel: Tailored Supplement for Women
• 34:31 The Potential of Golden Leaf Ginkgo Extract in Cancer Treatment
• 43:55 Closing Remarks and Future Directions

Transcript

Dr. John Hall, PhD: The extracts discriminate between the healthy DNA structure and the cancer DNA structure.

Victor Dwyer: Hey everyone, welcome to the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, a podcast where we discuss the breakthroughs and insights in cancer treatment and research. Join us as the top minds in the field share their discoveries, equipping our audience with essential knowledge to better navigate the formidable challenge of cancer. I’m your host, Victor Dwyer, and today I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. John Hall as our guest. As the Director of Research at the Beljanski Foundation with prestigious schools such as Princeton and Rockefeller University’s career profile, Dr. Hall has made noticeable strides in the field of cancer research and treatment.

In this episode titled, “Unlocking Nature’s Secrets in Cancer Treatment and Immune Support,” Dr. Hall will share his broad and in-depth knowledge and experiences in the field.

Victor Dwyer: Hey! Sylvie and John. When we kick this off, I would love for you to do a quick intro about yourselves so that way the audience knows a little bit more about you. I know Sylvie, you joined us before and the audience knows a little bit more, but for the people that haven’t tuned in yet, love for you to start out and give us a little intro about yourself.

Sylvie Beljanski: Sure. So my name is Sylvie Beljanski. I’m the President now of the Beljanski Foundation since my mom has passed away. She used to be the, the president since, creation of the foundation in 99, 1999. The foundation is a 501(c)(3), which was created in New York City and its mission is to do research on cancer and other chronic diseases with natural compounds and the compounds that we are using mostly are compounds that stem from my late father’s research, Dr. Mirko Beljanski.

Dr. Mirko Beljanski was a biologist, he was, he passed away in 98. So, the foundation is really named after, after him. And he was one of the first scientists to look at the environment as a cause for cancer. At the time back where, at the time where he was conducting his research back in the eighties, everybody, all the scientist community was agreeing upon the idea that cancer could only result from a genetic mutation.

And, of course, I mean, this is kind of ridiculous when you look at it now, 50 years later, because that would mean that there would be a set number of people with genetic mutation who would have cancer. And we see that the numbers of cancer, unfortunately, are growing and growing. There is more and more cancer around the world. So it’s not, obviously just a genetic mutation. My father was the first one to really demonstrate how environmental toxins affect the DNA and slowly but surely, cumulatively, little by little, exposure after exposure, induced what he called a destabilization of the DNA. And then he looked at nature to find natural solutions, and he found a number of natural compounds able to do exactly the opposite of toxins.

They, those, compounds, natural compounds are able to recognize the cells whose DNA has been destabilized and block selectively the duplication of this DNA. So, those cells are not growing, they are just destroyed through a mechanism called apoptosis and they are destroyed and you get rid like that of cancer cells. And he first tested that on plant because vegetables also can get cancer, and then of course, on animals, mice and lab mice. And then one day, I mean, it’s a number of people started to knock at the door and say, “Hey, we have heard that you have good results with your mice. Can we, can we, I mean, we have cancer. Can we get something?”

And that’s how we started to help a number of people with with cancer. And the beauty of those extracts is that because they work at DNA, they are not, it’s not, you know, one type of cancer, breast cancer or ovarian cancer or colon cancer or lung cancer. It’s cancer cells. It’s recognizing cancer cells. and destroying cancer cells wherever they are located. So it’s not organ or gender dependent.

Victor Dwyer: That’s amazing. Wow. Thank you. That was a very robust intro about the Beljanski Foundation. So I love that. Thank you. That, no, that was great. That was great. That covers literally like everything there. And John, do you want to give us a quick intro about what you do?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Well, I am the Director of Research at the foundation and I’ve been with the group for some time now. So, I’m glad to say we’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit. And what that means when you do research is that you have a record of publications that are properly reviewed, that is peer reviewed, in good journals that tell the story about how these extracts work, what they can do against specific cancers and extend the whole view of their mechanism of action, but also of the potential they have in cancers.

So The other thing we’ve been spending some time on is they’re not just anti-cancer extracts, as if that weren’t enough, but they are also anti-inflammatory, which is important because inflammation is a forerunner of cancer in many cases. So advanced inflammation, chronic inflammation contributes to the onset of cancers. And so it’s not surprising entirely that these extracts have an anti-inflammatory and an anti-cancer effect. Because both of those are on the same spectrum, the same pathway. You can imagine starting with inflammation, when it goes on long enough, the risk of cancers increases. And sometimes in some people, the cancer takes hold.

The extracts work against, as Sylvie said, many types of cancer. It’s not gender specific, it’s not cell type or organ specific. And the inflammation, I think, will have the same pattern. We don’t yet know the full range of inflammations that can be assessed but, for example, we’ve worked on benign prostatic hyperplasia, which is a very common occurrence as men age, their prostates enlarge for a number of reasons, but that is a quality of life issue that’s serious. It involves urinary function. And these guys have to get up at night, God knows how many times. And they really have their life tied to the bathroom. and to all the inconveniences that, that comes with. And both extracts, the Pao Pereira and the Rauvolfia Vomitoria are effective, not just then against prostate cancer.

We’ve done the experiments to show that in collaboration with a group at Columbia University Medical Center, but we also have studied their anti inflammatory effect on BPH, as I was saying, and they’re quite remarkably effective for this condition.

Victor Dwyer: And what does BPH mean?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, which is a technical way to say it’s benign, it’s not cancer.

Victor Dwyer: Okay, cool.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: And it’s in the prostate, but hyperplasia means that the tissue is swollen, it’s enlarged and that gives rise to all the problems. Simply put the extracts shrink the size of the prostate, that BPH prostate, they get it right down next to normal size, and we found a couple of pathways that shows how they do that.

And to fill that point in a little bit, I’ll say one is just by exerting an anti inflammatory effect. That’s against a, a, a transcriptional complex called NF Kappa B. And so that’s a direct anti-cancer, I mean, anti-inflammatory effect, but it does turn out, as I’ve been suggesting, the connection to the inflammation of cancer is very serious because the NF Kappa B is also attenuated in prostate cancer cells.

So again, it shows the linkage between inflammation and cancer. But these extracts also have an effect on the hormone balance. And this is pretty well known that as men age, their levels of testosterone declines. It’s a normal part of aging. But one of the things that happens in the prostate is a compensatory action. The enzyme 5 alpha reductase. converts what testosterone is there to a more active form as if to compensate for the lower level of testosterone. It’s transformed into an active, more active molecule. But that effect is that molecule binds with great avidity to the androgen receptor on these prostate cells and triggers their growth. So, it’s a simple pathway that we can interrupt by, by inhibiting that enzymatic conversion. From testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, which is actually the trigger for BPH itself.

Victor Dwyer: Okay. That’s really interesting. And when, when I think of infl infl inflammation, I think of like muscle inflammation and things like that. Can you go into a little bit about what the, the, the link between inflammation and cancer are? I think that would be interesting.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Yes, indeed. I think one of the things we’ve learned is that remarkably enough, the inflammatory process contributes to the kind of DNA destabilization that Mirko Beljanski discovered. And Sylvie mentioned environmental factors, but we also have endogenous factors in addition to exogenous, inside and outside, environmental and within the body.

These are factors that contribute to the DNA damage that’s seen in cancer and in fact, in inflammation. So, that’s another way to tie these together. Destabilization is one word. As we’ve looked and learned more about it, we see that it’s largely due to oxidative stress and many of the chemicals, many of the agents we find in our environment that we ingest through water and food, we’re exposed to sunlight.

For example, all of these things can have an oxidative effect and that damages DNA because DNA is one of the main targets of this whole oxidation effect. of what’s called oxidative stress. So, it turns out, it’s really quite something that inflammation itself brings with it some generation of these oxidative reactive species and so it actually contributes to a destabilization of the DNA or, as I call it nowadays, a DNA damage. And so that’s a real link between inflammation and cancer because the inflammation itself is triggering the very destabilization and DNA damage that is seen in cancer cells. Does that make sense?

Victor Dwyer: Yeah. Yeah, that really does. You explain that really well. And can you explain why the extracts are not toxic to healthy cells and the tissues, but they do directly target the cancer cells?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Yes, in our understanding, we’ve just been describing a fundamental difference between a healthy cell and a cancer cell and it’s at the level of DNA, as Sylvie’s father discovered, but the healthy DNA has way less, far less of this oxidative damage and that oxidative damage is serious. It means that some of the bonds have been opened. There may be substitutions of atoms and there’s some bonds are stretched. So, the DNA of a cancer cell, one has to imagine that it’s, it’s in pretty bad shape because of this oxidative damage. But that feature, this, it’s a common feature of all cancers we’ve seen that have been looked at. is that this DNA damage is something that creates a fundamental difference between a healthy DNA and a cancer DNA.

And believe it or not, the extracts discriminate between the healthy DNA structure and the cancer DNA structure. They make that choice and bind to the cancer DNA and ultimately lead to apoptosis, which is cancer cell death. And they don’t find a target. The healthier DNA doesn’t say, “Hey, I’m damaged. Come over here, pal. Come over here, Rauwolfie, and attack me.”

They’re just, they’re alive, they remain alive and well, even when they have just as much of these active compounds from the extracts as the cancer cells do. So, there’s a discrimination that occurs at the level of the biochemistry, which is really quite bad.

Sylvie Beljanski: I found, you know, in my father’s things, I mean, a number of pictures that he took with his microscope. And really what he was able to show to, to evidence is that whether you look at plant cancer, animal cancer, or human cancer, all those cancerous cells always present the same destabilization of the DNA. There are always those big loops. It’s like kind of hallmark of cancer. And then you have another set of pictures which show healthy cells and cancerous cells, put in petri dish with some Pao Pereira or some Rauwolfia Vomitoria. And it turns out that both the Pao Pereira or some Rauwolfia Vomitoria extract are fluorescent, naturally fluorescent. And what you can see on the microscope, is that when you are speaking of healthy cells, the fluorescence remains outside of, of the cell. It kind of surrounds the healthy cells. On the other hand, when you have cancerous cells, the fluorescence penetrates the cancerous cells, really invades the nucleus, the nuclei of the cancerous cells. And that’s why it is able to destroy those cells. But, healthy cells, it just surrounds them. So, if you do not have cancerous cell, the product is not going to be able to penetrate the cells and you are going to eliminate the product in a matter of hours without toxicity and without side effect.

Victor Dwyer: That’s amazing. That’s super valuable. And where does the foundation stand on integrative and alternative medicine? I’m curious on that.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Well, I would say we played a leadership role there. which is really important for some foundation, some organization to play. And by that, I mean that we have been at the frontier of continuing to do advanced chemistry and research on these extracts.

And, for example, I went to a society of integrative oncology meeting several years ago in Houston, and I gave up, I got up and gave a talk about this NF Kappa B effect I was talking about a moment ago. And I was then witnessing other talks that other groups were giving and I was struck by the fact that many of them were doing the kinds of experiments we’ve been doing for prostate cancer and then subsequently pancreatic cancer and ovarian cancer. It’s just, I wouldn’t want to say they’re just playing catch up. These are the kinds of experiments that need to be done to explore how these kinds of anti-cancer agents work. But we were ahead of the game, quite a few years we were doing these experiments that I felt that others were catching up to or, or were becoming becoming effective at studying.

So I think we, played a leadership role and we see that the whole field is growing. This kind of technology where this natural plant products are taken seriously at the level of science and seriously at the level of potential therapy is I think it’s catching on. I’ve also noted how slow this process is, but I think the Beljanski Foundation really has a great standing in this world and I could also go on about the fact that we were very careful to study how well the extracts, the Pao Pereira and Rauwolfia Vomitoria extracts, work together with mainstream therapies, like for example, chemotherapy.

There are quite beneficial effects to the combinations, which shows our willingness to really be alternative or complimentary. You take the both, the aspects of both, you can integrate and come up with therapies that really combine the best aspects of both. And if I’m saying that, I should add that if you take a plant extract like Pao Pereira and take advantage of its anti-cancer extract in this cancer cell, And you add in a known chemotherapy drug, which are famous for their effectiveness against fast growing cells, you can get a combination that is, is beneficial precisely because if in the presence of Pao extract, you don’t need as much of the toxic chemo drug, it’s called those reduction of the reduction effect. And this is a very important thing. So, there’s a pathway there for our extract to work together with traditional therapies, which I think is emphasizes this. It’s a leadership position with regard to the potential for all of these combinations of therapies and enables us to stand together and try to take advantage of the past while pointing towards the future.

Sylvie Beljanski: Another domain where I think the foundation asserts a position of leadership is about cancer stem cells. There are hundreds of researchers around the world who are now looking at ways to destroy cancer stem cells, address them because those cells are known to be responsible for metastasis and chemotherapy is not destroying them. So, I actually thousands and thousands of dollars, millions of dollars are spent by research teams around the world to find new drugs that will address those cancer stem cells.

And the Beljanski Foundation has already been looking into this issue now for several years, and we have been successfully funding some research program at Kansas University Medical Center, always with Pao Pereira and Rauwolfia extract on ovarian cancer stem cells and pancreatic cancer stem cells and those research programs have been extremely successful, have led to several peer reviewed papers that are available on the website of the foundation. And we are now funding a research program on breast cancer stem cells. So, that’s a big, big new project on a big scale. And I have, don’t know of any research team now doing this kind of thing on at that level.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, I think that’s great. And you guys talked about we recently talked about breast cancer and then we talked about prostate cancer a little bit. Can you go into a little bit, a little bit about your research when it comes down to ovarian and pancreatic cancer and the recent research that you had there?

Dr. John Hall, PhD:  Sure. As Sylvie just said, these experiments were conducted in Dr. Qi Chen’s laboratory at University of Kansas Medical Center, and they were very successful, very provocative. We chose these two cancers in part, precisely, because they’re very difficult to treat. So, it was a challenge that we took up. Pancreatic cancer is a, just an awful diagnosis, very poor prognosis. And it is often diagnosed late because there are not a lot of symptoms that tells the patient, “I got to go to the doctor, something’s wrong.”

Same with ovarian, it’s often diagnosed late, but they’re both very difficult to treat, partly because they’re late diagnosis, but also they’re just not easy cancers to get anti-cancer products to work effectively at. And we studied both of our extracts, which we mentioned, the Pao and the Rauwolfia, and in more or less parallel experiments, studying both pancreatic and ovarian and this goes through the kind of normal step-by-step process that say, for example, pharmaceutical companies would do if they had an anti-cancer drug that they’re developing, which is starting out in cell based studies. Just study cells that are cultured. They live in a tissue Petri dish, and you can passage them and prepare them for an experiment and then add to the medium the cells grow in whatever agent you like.

When Chen added the Pao or the Rauwolfia, to cancer cells from ovary, ovary and pancreas. She found that there was selective killing of those cells. And she compared directly to healthy cells of the ovary, of the ovary and prostate, pancreas, I’m sorry, and found that there’s a differential there. Again, as I said earlier, these extracts make this discrimination between a cancer cell and a healthy cell. And after showing the cell based results, the trick is, next step is you go into animals.
These are animal based experiments, which are vitally important, because even though a mouse is a small animal, it’s still a mammal, and it shares with us the physiology, organization of the organs, the biochemistry, to a large extent, the pathways are very much the same, and in many cases identical. So, it’s possible to take experiments done in these animal studies and translate them, and you expect them to work just as well in humans. And what Chen saw in these experiments is that the extracts shrink the tumors, whether they’re pancreatic or ovarian, and lo and behold, they don’t at the same time cause negative side effects. They’re not toxic to the animals. This is this critical point about having an anti-cancer effect that doesn’t bring with it these negative side effects and this toxicity.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, I totally agree. And can you go into a little bit about what short RNA fragments are and their role in actually supporting the immune system a little bit?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Sure. This is a completely separate discovery of Dr. Beljanski who worked at a time when there was a discovery made about how, how cells replicate their DNA. And lo and behold, it turned out that small RNA fragments are used as primers to jumpstart the replication process. So, RNA isn’t part of the DNA. Ultimately, that little segment of RNA is replaced by DNA in the series of reactions that occur when a DNA is replicated. And DNA replication is important, of course, because if you want to generate daughter cells, each one has to have a complete set of chromosomes with all the DNA present to function properly.

At the time that Beljanski was working, there was a very important paper came out from Japan showing that these RNA fragments called primers are necessary, absolutely essential for DNA replication. And he managed in his mind to, to come up with the idea that these primers could be supplied exogenously. And by that, I mean that they could be given in this case, orally, sublingually to an organism that particularly was in need of some rescue because of a deficiency in their immune system, that these primer fragments would go to the bone marrow and jumpstart the process of DNA synthesis that I just mentioned in the bone marrow stem cells that give us all of our immune cell populations.

So, the connection to immunity was that he developed fragments that were quite specific. for generating the immune cells that, they’re called the white blood cell populations. And these derive, as I said, from the bone marrow of stem cells. And it turns out these primers go right there and they jump start.

He had evidence that they actually trigger this stimulate this process of DNA replication by acting as primers.

Victor Dwyer: Cool.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: And so the fragments now have a history, too. He did many experiments, Beljanski did, with these, in animals, rabbits in particular, showing that you could bring up these vitally important immune cells, their cell counts would increase, and it would enable the animals to survive, for example, treatments with certain chemotherapy drugs.

The foundation went on with this and took this to the next step. We sponsored a clinical trial in humans with advanced cancer patients who suffer from side effects of the chemotherapy that they take. And one of those side effects, it’s ubiquitous among cancer patients getting chemo, is loss of immune cell function, depletion of the critical white blood cells you need to fight infections.

And that makes sense because that’s one of the things that cancer patients often succumb to is a secondary infection, bacterial viral infection, that is deadly because their immune systems can’t fight it off. In this clinical trial, the patients at the Chicago Medical Center where it was conducted, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, were given these RNA fragments and they all had their blood cells come back up.

The focus of that particular trial was a class of cells called platelets, which are responsible for blood clotting. That’s a critical need. If you don’t have enough platelets, you can bleed to death because of a simple cut or a hemorrhage that occurs inside that you’re not even aware of. We also know that we can boost the neutrophils, but the focus of this trial, as I said, was platelets, and it was a resounding success.

All of the, all of the people in the trial, those cancer patients got these RNA fragments and their cells rebounded. The platelets, in particular, that we were scoring, and they didn’t need any supplemental treatment to support their immune system. They were able to sort of get through the trial without the dose reduction, without reducing the level of chemo drugs that were given and without blood transfusions to restore these cell populations. So, I think this is, as I started to say a moment ago, as a great success and really shows that you can influence this immune cell population with these simple RNA fragments.

Victor Dwyer:  And so, let me see if I got the dumbed down version of this for the audience.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Alright.

Victor Dwyer: And so this is my, this is my attempt. So, let me know how this is. So, what I’m hearing is that, first of all, chemotherapy inhibits the immune system and it decreases the white blood cell count and everything else. And that taking these RNA fragments will help go to the bone marrow, potentially adjust the DNA and help, at least, repair as some types so, that way the bone marrow can produce these white blood cells and platelets to potentially get your immune system back up to or increase the immune system response, so that way during chemotherapy, your immune system works better. How, how off was that?

Dr. John Hall, PhD:  Well, I’m really pleased I communicated so well. Okay. The only thing is there’s no repair process, those primers just stimulate DNA synthesis. That’s the key step. But as I was trying to say a moment ago, DNA synthesis s essential for reproduction of the cells. And in biology, we say there’s a parent cell and in order for you get to get more cells, I mean, and we need more cells because it means cells depleted, you have to get cell division and you can’t get cell division without duplicating the DNA. And that’s what the fragments do. The rest of it, you nailed. I mean, that’s it. That’s awesome.

Victor Dwyer: Great.

Sylvie Beljanski: I would like to say that they are not sponsored by the Beljanski Foundation, but out there right now, there is a lot of interest in the scientific community for immunity, understanding the effect of, of also an inflammation and Alzheimer. And what you see is a new set of publications coming out making the link now between platelets and serotonin. Serotonin is a feel-good happy hormone, and over 90 percent of our serotonin has to be stored in the platelets. So, if you destroy the platelets with chemotherapy, well, you may induce depression.

So by helping the body to have a physiological healthy number of platelets, you also avoid the depression. Now there is also new publications coming out, making the link between depression and inflammation, and inflammation and Alzheimer’s. So, I’m not saying that, you know, those little RNA fragments can have any effect on Alzheimer. Obviously, I mean, the science has not been, is not there. I mean, we have not done the research, but there is a very, very interesting link here that really would deserve more research. And I would love to see some I mean, some new partnerships, new people working on Alzheimer, for example, to approach us and and get involved into finding how we could we could make a difference.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, definitely!

Dr. John Hall, PhD: What somebody said emphasizes the fact that platelets are involved in more than just clotting blood. And it’s been spoken of as a brain connection. One of the key components of connect, of our ability of our brains to function and develop involves platelets. And that the evidence for that is their importance in as carriers of serotonin, which is a, a signal in the brain. So, there’s a, a wonderful field to explore there, wonderful opportunity.

Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah, we we know that we are on something really very valuable here. Unfortunately, I mean, we are very small foundation. We do not. I mean, our funding is very limited and we are only able to fund one research program at a time, and we are already proud to be able to achieve that over the past 15 years. We have like At a dozen or so of scientific publications published, which I think is very, very great achievement already by itself for a small foundation. But there is so much we could do if we had the, the proper attention from institutional people.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, I totally agree. And then I also want to understand why the foundation prompted the investigation into the anti-cancer effects of the golden leaf Ginkgo extract. I don’t know exactly how to say it. I think it’s Ginkgo. Like, love to hear how to pronounce it. And then also what are the anti cancer effects of it?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Well, that golden leaf Ginkgo extract is is remarkable in a number of ways. Beljanski originally started working on it in part because he could imagine he saw evidence that there is radiological protection, meaning protection from the damage caused by ultraviolet radiation.

And this comes from the fact that the Ginkgo tree itself was one of the few trees that survived the atomic bomb blasts in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So, something’s going on there, he reasoned, Beljanski did, and he did study the the Ginkgo extract. He chose to use the yellow or golden leaf, and that’s interesting because in the fall, when the leaves change color from green to yellow or gold, there’s much less chlorophyll there, and you get a somewhat different biochemical profile, which seems to be advantageous for the activities that he first established and that we followed up on.

And so there’s an, there’s a radiological protection effect, which actually in his work was shown to be involved with protecting skin from the scarring that occurs when it’s damaged in some way, including by, by radiation treatments. But, in the course of that, he discovered that that extract, the golden leaf Ginkgo, inhibits the activity of a whole class of enzymes called RNAses. It’s not all RNAses, but it’s a sizable number. And we’ve done experiments on that again, going back to Kansas and Dr. Chen. And one of those enzymes is called angiogenin. And Chen’s more recent work shows that by inhibiting angiogenin, the golden leaf Ginkgo extract helps prevent the blood supply that forms that tumors need to enable their growth.
So, it’s a anti-vascular type of effect, anti-angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the process of formation of new bloods, new blood vessels, and that’s needed for the tumor. It’s a very crafty animal. These tumors, they can manipulate the host system in so many ways. But if it, once the tumor starts to grow, it releases this enzyme that can trigger development of this blood supply and that’s enables growth of the tumor.

Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: This also has an effect on promoting the invasiveness of cancer cells. So, to answer your question, there are anti-cancer effects from this golden leaf Ginkgo. Number one, preventing the blood development of blood supply and the other inhibiting the invasiveness of the cells. And so their inhibitory effects on cancer are number one, impeding growth because the blood supply isn’t enriching, isn’t developed, and then also inhibiting invasiveness, which means helping prevent metastasis. So, those are worthy goals for an anti-cancer extract, and Ginkgo has these effects.

Victor Dwyer: Sylvie, did you want to add anything to that?

Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah, so cancer cells are very, they have a huge appetite compared to healthy cells. I mean, they, they divide themselves much faster than healthy cells, that’s why they create those tumors. So, they, in order to divide themselves very, very this huge provide this huge turnovers, they need a lot of energy meaning they need a lot of nutrients if they need a nutrient at all. So, they’re creating those new blood cells, a little bit like highways to bring them more nutrients. If you, if you prevent those highways to be built, you are kind of starving the, the cancer cells.

And then they are also using the same highways, as Dr. Dr. Hall was saying, to, to limit, to, to spread and create metastasis. So, you are, you are cutting the road, and they cannot, they are starved, and they cannot, they cannot thrive. So, that’s what Ginkgo actually is doing. Plus, based on my father’s work, we know that it is helping with all with the fibrosis, preventing the fibrosis of the skin when there is radiotherapy, especially that’s extremely important because radiotherapy creates, very often, burns of the, the skin and this, those burns turn into fibrosis, which can be very pretty debilitating effect over the years. I mean, it’s painful, it changes the aspect of the skin. So, so being able to prevent fibrosis also by inhibiting the enzymes that induce fibrosis, but also supporting the liver, helping the liver to create more collagen, having a better quality of the skin, being able to help people after surgery to have a better repair of the tissues, all that Ginkgo is able, golden Ginkgo is able to offer. And that’s something very often overlooked, but very, very important actually.

Victor Dwyer:  Yeah, I totally agree. And what is the recommended what is the recommended dosage, dosage or form of the golden leaf Ginkgo extract for individuals that are planning on taking it, possibly? What is the recommend dosage or form of way to take that?

Sylvie Beljanski: So, for for the dosage, we I mean, we are not doctors and we do not make. We only, I mean, direct people to look at the recommendations that were made by Dr. Christian Markovic, who was a friend of my father and left a number of notes indicating what he felt were based on the doctor’s experience, what he felt was the best dosage for a number of conditions. So, very often we saw that Dr. Markovic was recommending about four capsules a day of Ginkgo and we, we have tried to at Maison Beljanski to make the same dosage of capsules that was, was done at the time of Dr. Markovic.

Victor Dwyer: That’s amazing. And is there anything else that we talked about today, either Dr. Hall or Sylvie, that you want to bring up, and think that it requires more further discussion? It could have been about the Ginkgo leaf extract, it could have been about the Pao Pereira, like, is there anything out, anything any other conversations that we talked about that you want to go more in depth with a little bit?

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Well, it bears repeating, if it’s repeating that all of the extracts we’ve spoken of, three of them are plant extracts, Pao, Rauwolfia, and Ginkgo. And one is cellular extract, actually from bacteria, consisting of purified RNA, but they’re used in animals and in humans, in all the experience we’ve seen over many, many years, they share this lack of toxicity that we’ve emphasized in connection with the Pao and Rauwolfia as anti-cancer agents. But, that holds also for the RNA and the golden Ginkgo extract. These are simply, there’s no record of toxicity here. We don’t have a record of side effects and that holds for all the extracts we’re talking about.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah

Sylvie Beljanski: And, and I would like to add that the foundation, Beljanski Foundation beyond funding research, we are also, I mean, sharing this research on the Beljanski Foundation website, beljanski.org, and we are also organized, and organizing a number of educational events around the year. We had, a few months ago, a very successful Beljanski cancer conference that was hosted in Jacksonville. And it was that event actually that helped us to fund the Breast Cancer Stem Cells Research Program.

And we are already planning a new Beljanski Cancer Conference sometimes in spring of 25. So, at that time, we look forward to share the results of breast cancer stem cells and, hopefully, to also raise money for prostate cancer stem cells because again, those, those plant extracts, the benefits are not gender or organ, so there is no reason if the ladies can benefit from those extracts, the gentlemen should also. And indeed, I mean, inflammation of prostate, prostate cancer is something that affects so many men that we definitely are committed. That’s a Beljanski Foundation to help those men in, and looking into a solution.

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, that’s really valuable. What I really learned was like. that you can take all three of them and basically showing and also showing the correlation between inflammation and cancer is really, really interesting as well.
I didn’t realize there was a big correlation between the two and I think that’s really fascinating. And then also showing that you can actually have methods to use these RNA fragments to help increase your immune system, even, even if you’re going through chemotherapy or not and things like that. And the importance of having platelets and how it affects mood and how everything’s kind of like interconnected, how, once you have inflammation, how it will lead to these, these slight mutations and things like that. It really shows that how our body like works together. That’s really fascinating.

Sylvie Beljanski: Well, I’m glad to see that you are warming up to biology.

Dr. John Hall, PhD: That’s wonderful. Yes. Yes.

Victor Dwyer: Yes. Yes. And unfortunately that’s all we have time for today. So Sylvie, can you please tell people how to find more information about the foundation? And everything else there.

Sylvie Beljanski: So go to the website BELJANSKI dot org. B. E. L. J. A. N. S. K. I. and you will find everything about our past research, our ongoing research programs and all of our upcoming events. We also have a CME program, a one hour CME program by, so the text is a, is a, is a. It’s told, the story is told by Dr. Hall and is very comprehensive and I think if you are really interested in the pro if you are in the professional realm and you are interested by this approach, you should listen to this CME program.

Victor Dwyer: Awesome. Well Dr. Hall, thank you so much for joining. And also Sylvie, thank you for sort of co-hosting there as well. And that’s all we have time for today. And thank you everyone for watching and we’ll catch you next time. Thanks guys. Thank you.

Sylvie Beljanski: Thank you. Thank you, Victor!

Dr. John Hall, PhD: Thank you