{"id":1619,"date":"2025-01-24T22:40:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T22:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/exthera-claimed-its-device-could-cure-cancer-but-patients-died\/"},"modified":"2025-01-24T22:40:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T22:40:47","slug":"exthera-claimed-its-device-could-cure-cancer-but-patients-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/exthera-claimed-its-device-could-cure-cancer-but-patients-died\/","title":{"rendered":"ExThera Claimed Its Device Could Cure Cancer. But Patients Died."},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The private jet took off from the Caribbean island of Antigua in April carrying three highly combustible tanks of compressed oxygen and a terminally ill cancer patient.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Kim Hudlow had chartered the plane for her husband, David. She crouched by his side on the five-hour journey to Florida, frantically adjusting the valve on one of the oxygen tanks as he struggled to breathe. A doctor had just told her he was dying. She was terrified he wouldn\u2019t survive the flight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was an abrupt turnaround. Six days earlier, Ms. Hudlow and her husband, who had late-stage esophageal cancer, had arrived on the tropical island full of hope that a novel blood-filtering treatment offered there would save Mr. Hudlow\u2019s life \u2014 or at least prolong it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They were among about two dozen families lured to Antigua by a California start-up called ExThera Medical and its secretive billionaire partner, Alan Quasha.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera, which has about 50 employees, makes a single product: a filter that it says can be used to remove the tumor cells that circulate in patients\u2019 blood and enable cancer to metastasize. Early last year, the company sold thousands of the devices to Mr. Quasha\u2019s private equity firm, Quadrant Management, which began using them on late-stage cancer patients at a small clinic in Antigua.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Quadrant, which invests on behalf of Mr. Quasha and his family and doesn\u2019t have outside investors, charged $45,000 for each course of treatment and advised patients to return to the clinic for regular sessions. It also urged them to abstain from chemotherapy between treatments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera and Quadrant promoted the blood filtering to the Hudlows and other couples by citing a Croatian study of patients with metastatic cancer that they said had yielded extraordinary results, according to phone recordings obtained by The New York Times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In one call with the Hudlows, John Preston, an ExThera board member and longtime business partner of Mr. Quasha, claimed that three patients in the study had been cured of their cancers. During another call, Dr. Sanja Ilic, ExThera\u2019s chief regulatory officer, told Ms. Hudlow that one of the study\u2019s patients had recovered from inoperable colon cancer to such an extent that he was training for a marathon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI don\u2019t know of any other treatment available in the world, on this planet, that can do better stuff,\u201d Dr. Ilic told Ms. Hudlow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But those statements have yet to be backed up by any published data, and the Croatian study \u2014 with only 12 participants \u2014 was too small to draw any reliable conclusions, according to the doctor who conducted it. There is no data from a human clinical trial showing the device slows or reverses cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized ExThera\u2019s blood filter for use only in emergency Covid-19 cases. The filter appears to work well for that purpose, having been administered successfully to hundreds of severely ill patients infected with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last summer, the F.D.A. allowed ExThera to test the filter on five pancreatic cancer patients in Oklahoma \u2014 the first phase of what is likely to be years of clinical trials to seek the agency\u2019s approval to use the filter to treat cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By carrying out the treatments in Antigua, where the F.D.A. has no jurisdiction, ExThera and Quadrant circumvented that long, drawn-out regulatory process. But Mr. Preston and Dr. Ilic may have nonetheless violated federal law by promoting ExThera\u2019s filter to American cancer patients on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In February, two months before the Hudlows\u2019 ill-fated trip to Antigua, Jonathan Chow, ExThera\u2019s director of medical affairs, warned the company\u2019s top executives in a letter that the Antigua operation amounted to an unethical and unsafe experiment on patients and urged them to shut it down, according to three people familiar with the matter. During a brief visit to the island, Dr. Chow had witnessed patients bleeding from catheter wounds and screaming in pain. ExThera didn\u2019t act on his pleas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">More than 600,000 Americans die of cancer each year. For all the medical advances achieved in recent decades, the number of therapies offered to patients whose cancer has spread to multiple organs remains limited. In most cases, the standard of care is still chemotherapy and radiation, which can buy patients time but rarely cures them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Patients with grim prognoses are often willing to try anything that might offer hope. And plenty of providers \u2014 many of them operating in countries with regulations less stringent than those in the United States \u2014 are willing to seize on that desperation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some patients have sought treatment from a doctor in Austria who says he will cure them with a machine he built underground that supposedly restores \u201cbalance\u201d to cells. Others have gone to Mexico for injections of immunotherapy drugs straight into their tumors. Like the blood-filtering sessions in Antigua, these treatments are expensive and not covered by insurance, saddling patients and their families with enormous out-of-pocket costs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But ExThera and Quadrant seemed to offer more credibility than the usual offshore clinic. ExThera is a U.S. company with an F.D.A.-approved device, albeit not for the purpose it was being touted. Quadrant, too, is an American corporation, run by a wealthy investor with a successful track record. The treatment the companies were marketing was experimental, but its promoters had the veneer of legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In hindsight, Ms. Hudlow said, the possibility of a miracle cure acted on her \u201clike a drug.\u201d She added, \u201cI feel so duped by all these people. The way this was spun up and the way it was explained, they got me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Quasha said in an email that Quadrant \u201cmade no recommendations for what therapies patients should receive.\u201d Patients opted for the filter treatments on their own in consultation with their doctors, and the company took care to remind them \u201cat multiple steps in the process\u201d that the therapy was experimental, he said. He and Quadrant declined to address the specifics of Mr. Hudlow\u2019s or any other patient\u2019s case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Of the more than 20 patients treated in Antigua, The Times has identified at least six who have died since their treatments. However, one patient, a woman from Oklahoma, did appear to benefit from the blood filtering. Her husband said that the treatments provided her significant relief from her pancreatic cancer pain and that she no longer requires any pain medication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After The Times sent ExThera a list of detailed questions, the company said it asked Mr. Preston to leave its board and told its employees it had parted ways with Dr. Ilic. It also said it terminated its partnership with Quadrant. ExThera did not elaborate on the reasons, but Mr. Quasha said it was a mutual business decision and \u201chad nothing to do with our belief in the efficacy of the filter treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Despite the split, Quadrant says it continues to treat cancer patients in Antigua with ExThera\u2019s devices. Quadrant has several thousand filters stored at a warehouse on the island.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-361a9673\">A Military Origin<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera\u2019s blood filter came out of a military contest. In 2012, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon department behind early versions of the internet, solicited proposals for a new medical device that would remove pathogens from blood. The goal was to deploy it in the field to treat soldiers exposed to infections or biological agents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera, founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by two chemical engineers, won the contest with a three-by-nine-inch transparent cylinder containing more than 20 million tiny beads. The beads are covered in heparin, a substance similar to a molecule found inside blood vessels that pathogens bind to. When blood flows through the device, the beads mimic the inner walls of blood vessels and capture viruses, bacteria and fungi. The device works in tandem with a dialysis machine, which pumps blood out of a patient\u2019s body and into the device before returning it, filtered of pathogens, to the patient.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The European Union approved ExThera\u2019s filter, which the company christened the Seraph 100 Microbind Affinity Blood Filter, to treat bloodstream infections in August 2019. When the pandemic reached U.S. shores six months later, Army doctors tried it on two critically ill Covid-19 patients. The patients\u2019 viral counts plummeted, and both recovered. The F.D.A. subsequently approved the device for use on Covid patients on the cusp of respiratory failure. ExThera says its Seraph filter has since been used on thousands of U.S. and European patients with Covid or bloodstream infections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But as the pandemic ebbed, ExThera\u2019s sales to hospitals peaked at a few million dollars and then began to decline. The company began looking for new uses for its filter. One idea was to see if the heparin beads could also capture the tumor cells that float in cancer patients\u2019 blood. Known as circulating tumor cells, or C.T.C.s, they play an important role in enabling cancer to metastasize.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The initial signs were encouraging: A small German laboratory study showed that, at least in test tubes, C.T.C.s attached to the heparin beads.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera took the research a step further in the spring of 2023. Dr. Ilic, who had worked at major medical device companies before becoming ExThera\u2019s chief regulatory officer, met a Croatian doctor named Vedran Premu\u017ei\u0107 at a conference in Zagreb, and over dinner at a seafood restaurant, they decided to test the filter on cancer patients, according to a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The study began with eight patients in September 2023 and later expanded to 10 and then to 12 patients. Normally a study to gauge a device\u2019s effectiveness at treating cancer would be run by an oncologist, but Dr. Premu\u017ei\u0107 wasn\u2019t a cancer expert. He specialized in kidney diseases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In December 2023, Dr. Ilic discussed promising early findings from the study with ExThera\u2019s top executives, including results for a lung cancer patient whose tumor appeared to have shrunk and several patients whose biopsies had come back negative, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A few days later, Mr. Preston, the ExThera board member, informed the company that he knew someone who was interested in becoming its partner in the Caribbean. It was Mr. Quasha, with whom Mr. Preston had worked on private equity deals for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Quasha had deep pockets. Over four and a half decades, he had quietly built a fortune buying up companies and restructuring them. One of his early acquisitions was a Texas oil firm whose chairman was the future president, George W. Bush.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Following Mr. Preston\u2019s introduction, ExThera shared the Croatian cancer data with Mr. Quasha. Impressed, he invested $3 million in the company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He also created a subsidiary of his investment firm called Quadrant Clinical Care and appointed his daughter, Dr. Devon Quasha, a physician at Mass General Hospital in Boston, as one of its executives. Quadrant Clinical Care paid ExThera an additional $10 million \u2014 several times what ExThera was generating in annual revenue \u2014 to become its Caribbean distributor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-10\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-798988c8\">A \u2018Dubious Foreign Operation\u2019<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In early January 2024, Dr. Ilic and another ExThera official loaded a dialysis machine and hundreds of filters onto Mr. Quasha\u2019s private jet at an airport in San Diego and flew them to Antigua. On the way, the jet made a refueling stop in the Bahamas, where it picked up Mr. Quasha. Dr. Chow, ExThera\u2019s director of medical affairs, followed on a commercial flight two days later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-11\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Quadrant had contracted with a local clinic to begin administering the treatment. The ExThera team was traveling to the island to teach the clinic staff how to use the filter. Unlike the F.D.A., the government in Antigua had authorized Mr. Quasha\u2019s firm to use the device on cancer patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The operation had the potential to be lucrative. Quadrant was paying ExThera around $1,000 per filter, according to a person with knowledge of their contract, and three filters would be used per treatment regimen in Antigua. With a $45,000 price tag for patients, the profit margins for Quadrant could be huge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But when the ExThera employees arrived in Antigua, some of them quickly grew worried.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The clinic Quadrant had hired lacked modern medical equipment, and the doctor in charge, a surgeon named Joey John, was making incisions under some patients\u2019 collarbones to install dialysis catheters without using any medical imaging or sufficient anesthesia, according to two people familiar with what the ExThera team encountered. Dr. Chow witnessed patients bleeding profusely and, in one case, screaming in pain. He was also alarmed to learn that a patient was forgoing chemotherapy, a pillar of cancer care, for an experimental treatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">ExThera had flown in Sarah Mobbs, a nurse who had experience treating Covid patients with the filter, to help administer the therapy. Company officials had told Ms. Mobbs that she would be assisting with a cancer study. But when she arrived at Dr. John\u2019s clinic, she saw no signs of the guardrails that would normally accompany a clinical trial, three people with knowledge of the matter said. There was no treatment plan, no oversight from a medical board to ensure the supposed study was conducted safely and ethically. There wasn\u2019t even an oncologist on site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-12\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Mobbs later told associates that her unease grew when she overheard Dr. Ilic tell cancer patients that the filter would cure them, the three people said. She worried Dr. Ilic was giving them false hope. To extricate herself from the situation, she made up a story that her mother and daughter had been in a car accident and left the island in a hurry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Ilic said she shared some of Dr. Chow\u2019s and Ms. Mobbs\u2019s misgivings. But she denied telling any patients that the filter treatments would cure them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Chow voiced his concerns to Erin Borger, ExThera\u2019s chief executive, and others on several video calls, according to someone with knowledge of the conversations. He then sent Mr. Borger and Robert Ward, one of ExThera\u2019s founders who was also chairman of its board, a letter outlining his worries. In the absence of data supporting the use of the filter to treat cancer, the company was taking \u201cundue risks\u201d with patients and subjecting them to \u201chuman experimentation,\u201d he wrote. Referring to the Antigua clinic as a \u201cdubious foreign operation,\u201d he urged ExThera to end its association with it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But ExThera continued providing Quadrant with filters and the treatments in Antigua continued. Frustrated that his warnings were ignored, Dr. Chow resigned from ExThera in June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Asked about Dr. Chow\u2019s letter, Mr. Borger said: \u201cWe take matters of safety and workplace conduct very seriously. When these issues arise, we immediately investigate the matter and take appropriate action.\u201d He declined to say what, if any, actions had been taken. Dr. Ward declined to comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-13\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-4e7829d5\">The Cancer Wives Club<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nearly a month after Dr. Chow began airing his complaints inside ExThera, Mr. Preston, the board member who had introduced the company to Mr. Quasha, spoke by phone with Mr. and Ms. Hudlow and Jaime Baskin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow, who lives in Panama City, Fla., and Ms. Baskin, an elementary school special ed teacher in Chicago, had met 18 months earlier through a common friend. Ms. Baskin\u2019s husband, Brian Withey, was eight years younger than the 55-year-old Mr. Hudlow, but they both had metastatic cancer. Mr. Withey\u2019s had started in his rectum and spread to his liver.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Along with the wives of three other cancer patients, Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Baskin had formed what they jokingly referred to as \u201cThe Cancer Wives Club,\u201d texting and calling one another daily to lend emotional support and share new medical insights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">One member of their group had heard about ExThera and its blood filter through a friend who had breast cancer and had been treated \u2014 unsuccessfully, it would turn out \u2014 in Antigua. Intrigued, Ms. Baskin arranged a call with Mr. Preston. The Hudlows dialed in from Florida.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-14\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It is illegal in the United States to promote a medical device or a drug for a use that has not been approved by the F.D.A. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Preston did, according to a recording of the call.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Preston began by explaining the filter\u2019s origin and the science behind it. By eliminating circulating tumor cells from patients\u2019 blood, he said, the filter freed up the immune system to attack the tumor itself. (There is no published clinical data to support this theory.) Mr. Preston then brought up the Croatian study and said that four of its eight patients were \u201cdoing well\u201d and that another three seemed \u201cto be fully recovered from their cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Ms. Baskin asked what he meant by \u201cfully recovered,\u201d Mr. Preston replied: \u201cWe can\u2019t find it, I\u2019ll put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-15\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Preston also mentioned three metastatic cancer patients whose blood had been filtered in Antigua the previous month. He said the change in how those patients felt after their treatments was \u201cremarkable.\u201d One patient \u2014 the woman from Oklahoma \u2014 was doing so well that she no longer needed her pain medicine, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-16\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The call with Mr. Preston lifted the hopes of the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin. But the reality was not as promising as Mr. Preston had implied.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In an interview with The Times in September, Dr. Premu\u017ei\u0107, the nephrologist conducting the Croatian study, said it would be \u201chighly suspicious\u201d to describe the filter treatment as effective at such an early stage of research without larger randomized clinical trials. He said that while his study had produced encouraging results, it was too small to reach any firm conclusions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In November, the journal Blood Purification published <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/karger.com\/bpu\/article\/doi\/10.1159\/000542325\/915514\/First-In-Human-Rapid-Removal-of-Circulating-Tumor\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a short paper<\/a> about the study online. The paper said that the number of circulating tumor cells measured in 10 patients treated with the filter declined by a median of 71 percent during the treatment. But it said nothing about how the patients fared longer term and made no mention of three patients being cured of their cancers. Dr. Premu\u017ei\u0107 did not respond to follow-up questions after the paper was published. Dr. Ilic, who is a co-author with Dr. Premu\u017ei\u0107 on the Blood Purification paper, said more papers based on the Croatian study are forthcoming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Preston said in an email that his communications with the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin were \u201ctrue and accurate to the best of my knowledge\u201d and took place \u201cat the request of the treating physicians.\u201d But Ms. Baskin said no doctor was involved in setting up the call.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow, who had been a nurse before she started a roofing business with her husband, decided to do some of her own research. She spoke with Dr. Ilic, who talked in glowing but vague terms about the Croatian study. She also learned that a Boca Raton, Fla., oncologist named Mark Rosenberg, who had previously consulted on her husband\u2019s care, was referring patients to Antigua. She reached out to him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-17\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Rosenberg told Ms. Hudlow that he didn\u2019t have much data to go on but that patients who had undergone a filtering session felt \u201camazing\u201d afterward, according to a recording of one of their calls. He also told her that Dr. Ilic had shared with him scans showing that a patient\u2019s lung tumor had shrunk 80 percent within three weeks of being treated with the filter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf this is true, what we\u2019re seeing, this is the most exciting advance in oncology ever,\u201d Dr. Rosenberg told Ms. Hudlow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Rosenberg has since changed his view. In an interview, he said he stopped referring cases to the Antigua clinic months ago because he didn\u2019t see any positive results among his patients. He said Dr. Ilic never shared any data with him beyond the scans he mentioned to Ms. Hudlow. In the absence of data, \u201cit\u2019s difficult to know what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not real,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-18\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As an ExThera employee at the time, Dr. Ilic said she was not authorized to share clinical data with company outsiders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-19\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Times reviewed the scans \u2014 showing a patient\u2019s lungs before and after treatment \u2014 that Dr. Ilic showed Dr. Rosenberg. The post-treatment scan does appear to show a smaller tumor, but the angles and scales of the two images are different, which makes it difficult to tell whether the tumor actually shrank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow doesn\u2019t begrudge Dr. Rosenberg for his change of heart. But at the time, his enthusiasm helped sell her on the treatment. After talking things over with her husband, she contacted Tom Pontzius, the president of Quadrant Clinical Care, to make an appointment and wired $45,000 to the company. On Feb. 27, she and Mr. Hudlow flew to Antigua.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When they got to Dr. John\u2019s clinic, Ms. Hudlow\u2019s trained nurse\u2019s eye picked up on things that bothered her. The nurses weren\u2019t washing their hands. The surgical scissors they were using to cut away the dressings around patients\u2019 catheter wounds weren\u2019t sterilized. And one of the patient rooms didn\u2019t have a machine to monitor vital signs. But, she said, she tried to remain upbeat for her husband\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Over the next seven days, Mr. Hudlow underwent three filtering sessions. Afterward, Ms. Hudlow said, he felt weaker, and his pain increased.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Soon after the Hudlows returned to Florida, there were signs that his cancer was growing more aggressively. A test called Signatera showed that the amount of cellular tumor DNA in his blood rose nearly sixfold. As she was cutting his hair one day, Ms. Hudlow noticed an ugly-looking growth on his back. Soon, another one appeared on his ear, followed by one on his scalp. They were skin tumors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-20\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Hudlow was also having difficulty breathing. Ms. Hudlow took him to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a pleural effusion \u2014 a buildup of fluid in the lining of the lungs. Doctors tapped his lungs and drained a liter of reddish-brown liquid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow wondered whether her husband should get back on chemotherapy, but Mr. Preston, the ExThera board member, had advised against it on their call. He had said that chemotherapy worked at cross purposes with the filter by weakening the immune system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-21\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She called ExThera\u2019s Dr. Ilic for advice. Dr. Ilic said that if Mr. Hudlow felt worse after the filter treatments, it was a good sign, according to a recording of the call. It meant that he \u201chad strong immune activation,\u201d Dr. Ilic said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Ilic dismissed the Signatera test because she said it didn\u2019t differentiate between live and dead cancer cells. Quadrant had said it would send samples of Mr. Hudlow\u2019s blood to a lab in Germany to measure the change in his circulating tumor cells. That C.T.C. test was the one to pay attention to, Dr. Ilic said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-22\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow was still looking for more evidence that the treatment worked, so she inquired again about the Croatian study. Dr. Ilic said its data was \u201camazing,\u201d and she repeated something she\u2019d mentioned once before: The tumor loads of the patients in the study had shrunk by a minimum of 49 percent six to eight weeks after their treatments. Ms. Hudlow was in awe. \u201cWow, that is just, that\u2019s just unbelievable,\u201d she said. (There is no evidence of this in the Blood Purification paper.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even so, Ms. Hudlow sensed that there were simmering tensions between Dr. Ilic and Quadrant. After three weeks of waiting for results of the C.T.C. test, Ms. Hudlow had contacted the German lab directly and learned that Quadrant had bungled the blood shipment. Her husband\u2019s samples had arrived there coagulated and useless. When Ms. Hudlow told Dr. Ilic about the mishap during another call, Dr. Ilic called Mr. Pontzius, the Quadrant Clinical Care president, a \u201ctotal idiot\u201d who didn\u2019t understand medicine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But in the next breath, she gave Ms. Hudlow new hope, the recording of that call shows. She had previously mentioned a \u201cPatient No. 4\u201d from the Croatian study with inoperable colon cancer whose condition was similar to Mr. Hudlow\u2019s. That morning, Dr. Ilic said, she had learned that 60 percent of Patient No. 4\u2019s tumors had disappeared. In fact, the patient was doing so well that he was training for a marathon, she said. (There is no mention of this in the Blood Purification paper.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Ilic then confided to Ms. Hudlow something that she asked her not to repeat to anyone: British doctors had contacted her to discuss the filter in connection with the care of Catherine, Princess of Wales, who, Dr. Ilic suggested, had colon cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A person with knowledge of the princess\u2019s medical care said that was not true.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-23\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-68543b4f\">Three Husbands in the I.C.U.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hearing about Patient No. 4\u2019s recovery convinced the Hudlows to return to Antigua for another round of treatments. They flew there on April 3. Mr. Hudlow\u2019s health had declined sharply, but he was still able to walk on his own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Baskin and Mr. Withey were to fly in from Chicago four days later, on April 7. They would be joined by another member of the Cancer Wives Club, Stacey Bowen, and her husband, John, who had colon cancer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Baskin had been in contact with Dr. Ilic, too, but what had really sold her on the treatment was the call with Mr. Preston and his description of the three Croatian patients\u2019 full recoveries. The same was true of the Bowens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By the time the two other couples arrived on the island, Mr. Hudlow was in bad shape. During the second of his three scheduled filtering sessions, his pulse had quickened and he had begun gasping for air. The nurses transferred him to a small intensive care unit on the other side of the building.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Tests showed that his blood counts were dangerously low, so Dr. John ordered a blood transfusion. But that didn\u2019t help with his breathing. Mr. Hudlow spent three nights in the I.C.U. on intermittent oxygen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-24\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On April 8, Dr. John offered a grim prognosis: He told Ms. Hudlow that her husband was dying. Dr. John was traveling to Miami for a conference the next day and recommended that they get on the same commercial flight. If Mr. Hudlow struggled to breathe onboard, Dr. John said he would declare a health emergency and pull down the oxygen mask from the panel above his seat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That sounded like a terrible idea to Ms. Hudlow. On their last call before leaving Florida, Dr. Ilic had called Dr. John \u201ca cowboy\u201d and his clinic \u201cthe Wild West.\u201d Ms. Hudlow now wished she had taken her words more seriously.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow tried instead to arrange an air ambulance to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where her husband had been treated before. But Mayo told her it couldn\u2019t accept an international transfer. Running out of options, she pleaded with Dr. John to sell her oxygen tanks and then started dialing charter jet companies. Three pilots turned her down before she found one who agreed to fly with the oxygen tanks aboard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the meantime, John Bowen and Brian Withey had begun their own filtering treatments. After his first session on April 8, the incision Dr. John had made in Mr. Bowen\u2019s groin to insert his dialysis catheter began oozing blood. In the next room, Mr. Withey\u2019s blood clogged three filters before a fourth one finally seemed to work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-25\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Two days later, during his second filtering session, Mr. Withey clogged another five filters. According to Quadrant, if a filter became clogged, it was because it captured a large quantity of circulating tumor cells and other pathogens. But there was another possible explanation the company didn\u2019t discuss: Blood could coagulate inside the filter if the dialysis machine\u2019s flow rate was set too low. Videos taken by Ms. Hudlow during her husband\u2019s first round of treatments showed the flow rate set at 80 milliliters per minute, less than half of what ExThera considered the optimal range.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Baskin became worried, because whenever a filter got clogged, the nurses would just throw it away with Mr. Withey\u2019s blood inside. Including the blood in the connecting tubes, 335 milliliters of blood were being discarded each time. After five filter changes that day, Mr. Withey had lost nearly one-third of his blood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Mr. Withey was finally disconnected from his sixth filter around midnight, he looked white as a sheet. He stood up and walked over to his wife but then slumped to the floor unconscious and began shaking. Ms. Baskin became hysterical. A nurse rushed in and spent 10 minutes trying to resuscitate Mr. Withey before a doctor arrived and transferred him to the I.C.U.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The next day, Dr. John called Ms. Baskin from Miami and told her it looked like her husband had come down with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, a condition where platelets in the blood become dangerously low. Ms. Baskin was dubious because she knew H.I.T. was a rare condition, and she suspected the real problem was simpler: Her husband had lost too much blood. But Dr. John assured her that Mr. Withey\u2019s blood loss was manageable. When lab tests later showed her husband\u2019s platelets rebounding \u2014 indicating that H.I.T. was not the culprit \u2014 Dr. John agreed to order a blood transfusion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While Mr. Withey recovered in the I.C.U., Mr. Bowen had his third filtering session. His wife looked on anxiously as his blood pressure kept dropping. She said that she called Dr. John, who assured her that everything was under control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-26\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Ms. Bowen was beginning to panic. When the filtering session was over and the nurse pulled the dialysis catheter out of her husband\u2019s groin, he wouldn\u2019t stop bleeding. Ms. Bowen frantically tried to reach Quadrant\u2019s Mr. Pontzius, but he was on a flight to Asia. Another doctor on call eventually determined that Mr. Bowen, too, needed a blood transfusion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Citing patient confidentiality, Dr. John said he couldn\u2019t comment on Mr. Hudlow\u2019s, Mr. Withey\u2019s and Mr. Bowen\u2019s cases. \u201cI am confident in the high quality of care provided at the clinic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a statement, Mr. Pontzius said that Dr. John is \u201ca respected U.S. board-certified surgeon with more than 30 years of medical experience\u201d and that he leads \u201ca safe and thriving clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Pontzius said that many of the issues raised by The Times were \u201cnot factually accurate,\u201d but he, too, declined to address specific patient cases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-27\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-3b9556bd\">Mr. Hudlow\u2019s Final Hours<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The jet carrying the Hudlows touched down on a private landing strip in Jacksonville around 2 a.m. on April 10. Ms. Hudlow rented a car near the airport and rushed her husband to the Mayo Clinic\u2019s Florida campus. She knew that if she wheeled him into the emergency room, the hospital wouldn\u2019t be able to turn him away. She was right. Mayo admitted him within five minutes of their arrival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As she had suspected, Mr. Hudlow suffered from pleural effusions. Doctors drained the fluid from his lungs, which helped him breathe. The bad news was that tumors in his liver, adrenal glands, bones and soft tissue had multiplied and grown. Other than offering hospice care, there was nothing the Mayo doctors could do. On April 16, Ms. Hudlow drove him home to Panama City so he could spend his final hours with his family. He died two days later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Hudlow announced her husband\u2019s death on a Facebook group she had created to share information about the filter treatments. In her post, she wrote that she didn\u2019t blame the treatments for Mr. Hudlow\u2019s death and that she remained hopeful that \u201cthere may be some magic there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Looking back, though, she thinks the treatments accelerated his cancer\u2019s progression. She says the ordeal also unnecessarily worsened the end of his life. Instead of putting him through exhausting travel and ineffective filtering sessions that increased his pain, she says, she could have provided him palliative care at home and kept him comfortable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Bowens flew back to Chicago from Antigua on April 15. Mr. Bowen vomited on the plane. The next morning, Ms. Bowen rushed him to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Doctors there found a clot in the same vein in which Dr. John had placed the dialysis catheter. They also diagnosed Mr. Bowen with tumor lysis syndrome, a condition in which cancer cells fall apart and flood the bloodstream with chemicals and toxins faster than the body can get rid of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-28\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Upon seeing Mr. Bowen\u2019s blood work, one of the Northwestern Memorial doctors predicted he wouldn\u2019t survive more than 48 hours. In the end, he lasted a week. He died on April 24, six days after Mr. Hudlow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Bowen said she and her husband had hoped the filter treatments would \u201cbe the miracle that would give him more time.\u201d That did not happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI\u2019m angry,\u201d Ms. Bowen said. \u201cThey preyed on our desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Lab tests initially suggested that the cancer of Mr. Withey, the lone survivor among the three husbands, regressed slightly in the first few weeks after returning from Antigua. But his tumor cell counts soon soared to as much as five times their levels before the trip. Scans also showed growth in the tumors in his liver. He went back on high-dose chemotherapy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-29\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Like Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Bowden, Ms. Baskin believes that the filter treatment supercharged her husband\u2019s cancer. That may be in part because it led him to stop undergoing chemotherapy, but it is impossible to know for sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-30\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Pontzius said Quadrant \u201chas no reason to believe that the therapy had a negative impact on any patient\u2019s health\u201d and pointed out that many of the patients Quadrant treated \u201cwere terminally ill and had exhausted other treatment options.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Quasha said the perceptions of grieving family members \u201care simply not reliable when compared to sound medical review and judgment of their care.\u201d He encouraged The Times to ask Dr. Rosenberg, the Boca Raton oncologist who consulted on both Mr. Hudlow\u2019s and Mr. Bowen\u2019s care, for his clinical perspective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Rosenberg said that Ms. Hudlow and Ms. Bowen may be right to think that the filter treatments accelerated their husbands\u2019 cancers \u2014 and therefore their deaths. \u201cDid it cause hyper progression? I asked myself that,\u201d he said. Dr. Rosenberg said it was possible that the blood filtering caused Mr. Bowen\u2019s tumor lysis by sparking \u201can overwhelming immune response,\u201d though he said such a scenario would be \u201cunusual.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In addition to Mr. Hudlow and Mr. Bowen, The Times has learned of four other patients who died following their treatments in Antigua.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">One of them was Kyle Chupp, who was diagnosed with metastatic abdominal cancer in December 2023. During a call the following month, Mr. Preston convinced Mr. Chupp and his wife, Vanessa, to delay Mr. Chupp\u2019s scheduled chemotherapy and radiation by telling them that the three patients who had fared the best in the Croatian study and were now cancer-free hadn\u2019t had chemotherapy or radiation beforehand, Ms. Chupp said. Mr. Chupp\u2019s blood was filtered in Antigua in February. His health declined precipitously afterward, and he died on April 19.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-31\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Two of the other deaths involved patients that Mr. Preston had described as feeling remarkably better during his phone call with the Hudlows and Ms. Baskin, according to people with knowledge of the patients\u2019 treatments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">One of them was Ashley Sullivan, who had metastatic breast cancer. Her husband, Edmund Mudge, said she did feel better after her first two filter treatments. But not long after the second treatment in March, she learned of a large new tumor between her ribs and lungs. Ms. Sullivan, 42, texted Dr. Ilic and asked her why the filter had worked so well for the Croatian patients but not for her, according to copies of the messages reviewed by The Times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHave NO idea who told you is not working for you,\u201d Dr. Ilic texted back. \u201cWe got your CTCs down to zero.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Three months later, Ms. Sullivan was dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/23\/business\/exthera-cancer-blood-filtering-device.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The private jet took off from the Caribbean island of Antigua in April carrying three highly combustible tanks of compressed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ExThera Claimed Its Device Could Cure Cancer. But Patients Died. - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/exthera-claimed-its-device-could-cure-cancer-but-patients-died\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ExThera Claimed Its Device Could Cure Cancer. 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