Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Jason Williams, President and Director of Interventional Oncology and Immunotherapy at the Williams Cancer Institute, uses a combination of Pulse Electric Field technology to ablate tumors and direct injection of immunotherapy drugs into the tumor to stimulate the immune system. This approach can be used in conjunction with traditional cancer treatments and has fewer side effects than standard immunotherapy. This method is part of the broader trend in cancer research to provide a more targeted approach to treating tumors. Jason explains, "Our big focus is going to the tumor itself, so we do treatments directly at the tumor, and we do a combination of things. We do things that will be considered ablation where we're using different technologies or energies — I'll explain — particularly, we use one called Pulse Electric Field (PEF), which kills the tumor by essentially shocking it, and that kills it in a way that actually makes the immune system see it better. You're not trying to kill all of the tumor, yo