Originally from Germany, Chris Apfel, MD, PhD, MBA is a physician and clinical researcher with over 100 published papers, including a six-factor clinical prediction model published in NEJM that led to the development of The Apfel Score, a clinical calculator used universally to predict the risk of postoperative nausea and vomiting, and Dr Apfel’s recruitment to the US and the University of California, San Francisco.

 Dr. Apfel first began to understand the pitfalls of cancer treatment and the cancer patient’s journey when his mother became ill with ovarian cancer. Despite having received the recommended therapies, she ultimately lost a very painful battle. When his father was later diagnosed with lung cancer, he opted to forego any therapy after having witnessed his wife’s ordeal, and subsequently succumbed to the disease.Driven to find more effective therapies for cancer patients,

Dr. Apfel left the clinical department at UCSF, received an MBA from Wharton to complement his scientific education, and ultimately founded SageMedic Corp., a visionary biotech company based in Redwood City, California that has developed a groundbreakingapproach to cancer care called the SAGE Oncotest™.Few people realize that only about 30% of late-stage cancer patients benefit from the first line of chemotherapy prescribed under the current standard of care. Nearly 70% have no objective response, which means that cancer therapy remains disproportionately hit or miss despite the truly impressive advances that have been made in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Creating a multiplicity of live, 3-D microtumor replicates of a patient’s cancer tissue to identify tumor resistance to standard of care therapies, the SAGE Oncotest guides the oncologist to select the most effective therapy, more than doubling the patient’s current chances of receiving the most effective treatment. In cases where therapeutic options that fall with NCCN (National Comprehensive Cancer Network) guidelines have proven to be insufficient or the outcome is in question, the assay panel may go beyond the standard of care to test repurposed drugs that are FDA-approved for different indications but have proven to be effective against cancer in select cases. Results are delivered within 7-10 days.

About SageMedic:SageMedic is a registered California lab that is fully accredited in accordance with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA) and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). For more information, visit https://sagemedic.com/

Dr. Apfel visits with Mark Alyn on this edition of Late Night Health.