Transcription of Interview with Professor Ruggiero January 2012 (Not Proofed)
“We began to work on the so called chemical GcMAF about two years ago. As you know, the GcMAF, Gc stands for ‘group component and MAF stands for Macrophage Activating Factor, it is a protein known for about 20 years and the researcher who gave this high contribution is Dr. (?) Yamamoto. He’s of Japanese ancestry but he’s been working in the United States for the past 30 or 40 years. This protein is a powerful stimulator of the immune system and this protein is very effective in the fight against cancer, against autoimmune diseases and also against HIV infection and AIDS. Here we work in a department of experimental pathology and oncology and we have been working on Vitamin D and Vitamin D receptor for several years.
(55 seconds) Since the GcMAF and Gc protein belong to the so called Vitamin D Axis which is a series of molecules that interact with each other to give a final response, it was only natural for us to focus our attention on the GcMAF because it had this very interesting biological properties that could be exploited in the fight against cancer and against AIDS. So in 2009, we contacted Dr. Yamamoto in Philadelphia. He was extremely kind and he sent us right away one of his best preparations of the so called chemical GcMAF. I say chemical GcMAF because it is produced with chemical reagents in a laboratory starting from a protein which is the Gc protein. Now to make things simple, Gc protein is the inactive precursor, GcMAF is the active ingredient in the molecule that actually stimulates the macrophages.
(1:58) So we began to work with the GcMAF provided by Dr. Yamamoto and we obtained almost immediately very, very interesting results on cancer cells. We saw that the cancer cells stopped growing as cancer cells, as tumor cells and they even returned to a normal phenotype as we say, that is, a normal appearance. So those data were extremely interesting. We published that data about one year ago. And by the way, in the past twelve months, we have been a most productive group on GcMAF. Only four papers have been published on GcMAF and out of those four papers, three are ours and the other is a Japanese group. So, we had seen these very, very interesting biological effects of GcMAF that could be exploited in the fight against cancer and possibly against AIDS.
(2:58) However, there was a major problem in administering the GcMAF to humans. To tell the truth, after publication of our article, we received many, many calls, many emails from private citizens or from doctors who wanted to administer this protein directly to patients, patients with cancer or patients with AIDS and most of these patients in the last stages of their disease who had done every other possible therapy and now they wanted to resort to this last hope.
(3:30) However, we were very, very embarrassed about this because this is a foreign protein, a foreign protein that has to be injected and it is always very dangerous to inject a protein that is not produced by your own body. You can have allergic reactions; you can have all types of side effects. Not only that, GcMAF is not produced at the moment and for the past two years by any approved pharmaceutical company. And this is also a problem, not only for the patient, but also for the physician prescribing it because it exposes him or her to a series of potential litigations, of potential dangers. We are more interested in the real dangers rather than in legal litigations but also those have to be taken into account.
(4:20) So about one year ago, we were faced with this dilemna. We had a protein that was very powerful, that showed very promising biological effects that could be used actually to fight; I’m not saying to cure because maybe this is too strong, but definitely to fight cancer or AIDS. But we cannot give this protein to humans for these two reasons. Because it is not produced by any approved company, a pharmaceutical company, and because it is a foreign protein with all the risk inherent in injecting a foreign protein.
(4:58) So we were faced with this dilemna. And we tried several ways to solve this dilemma and eventually in the spring of last year, so now we are talking of less than one year of experiments, in the spring of 2011, we came up with an idea. The idea was the following. Is there any way to produce the GcMAF in a natural way that is outside of a chemical laboratory, in a natural way as a food that can be ingested in the most natural way that is by swallowing it? Isn’t there any way?
(5:39) So we began studying, we began researching. Our research group is made of about ten people, between PHD students and research assistants, and we came up with a conclusion. There are certain strains of bacteria, bacteria that are not pathogenic of course to humans, that are able to convert the precursor, which is the Gc protein, into GcMAF in a natural and fully physiological way. However, these bacteria, they are not easy to grow, that is, they don’t do this job by themselves. They have to live in a symbiosis, in a community with other bacteria and most important, they have to have the primary ingredient, so they have to have the Gc protein to be converted into GcMAF. Not only that, the biochemical reactions are complicated and so you cannot simply mix all the bacteria together and expect that they produce the GcMAF. You have to add some bacteria first, then other, then other, then other. To make it short, it took more than three hundred experiments to come up with a formula that produced huge amounts of GcMAF and unexpected extremely positive side effects which I will tell you in a short while.
(7:03) So the name MAF 314, MAF stands for Macrophage Activating Factor, 314 for the number of experiments it took to have the first viable formula. If we had to give it a name now, probably I would say it’s MAF six hundred and something because we keep on doing experiments almost on a daily basis. Anyway, after 314 experiments, we came up with a formula and starting with Colostrum, which is the early milk produced by the mammals that is very rich in Gc protein and adding in a very peculiar sequence all the bacteria that we needed, we are able to have the bacteria convert to the Gc protein from Colostrum into GcMAF.
(7:55) So we ended up with a product that looked like a yogurt. If you look at it, it looks like a yogurt and it tastes like a yogurt. Of course, it is not a yogurt; otherwise, all our efforts would have been in vain if you could just go to the grocery store and buy some yogurt, we would have worked for nothing. Anyway, we came up with a product that looks like a yogurt, but unlike common yogurts, it has a huge amount of GcMAF inside it because the bacteria that we introduced were able to convert the Gc protein into GcMAF.
(8:33) Now even so you are not a biochemist, you immediately ask, well if you eat any type of protein that will be digested by the stomach, by the acid environment of the stomach, by the proteases of the stomach that are there exactly to digest proteins, and so it will not arrive intact anywhere, so you will not have solved the GcMAF (8:57 can’t make out the next few words …………). Correct. These are the principles of physiology. But there is an important caveat. The caveat is that in our mouth and in our pharynx in the so called tonsillar ring which is there even though your tonsils have been removed, in the pharyngeal area here in the throat, there is probably the highest concentration of immune cells, including macrophages, and this makes sense because whatever comes in contact with us is through breathing or eating or drinking and so this in our throat is the first line of defense against pathogens. Therefore, if you keep the MAF 314, let’s call it the yogurt, in your mouth just for a few seconds before swallowing it, as if it was a mouthwash, you stimulate by contact all the macrophages that are in the mucosa or to be more precise in the super mucosa. This is a tissue very well recognized by anatomists and histologists which is called MALT that stands for Mucos Associated Lymphoid Tissue. Then there is also the GALT which stands for Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissue. So, in our mucosa, there are many, many macrophages and all the macrophages in the mucosa of our mouth and our pharynx are directly stimulated by the GcMAF that is present in huge quantities in the MAF 134. (10:50)Those macrophages don’t remain there. It is very well known to histologists that those macrophages migrate into the blood stream and they go and fight whatever they have to fight - cancer cells, HIV infected cells or other virus infected cells. And then they re-circulate as we say in technical terms, that is, they come back to the mucosa. So the macrophages are able to move from the mucosa to the blood stream, from the tissues to the blood stream and back to the mucosa.
(11:23) So this is the first trick. The GcMAF that is a protein stimulates directly your macrophages in your mouth, in your throat. Then of course, it goes into the stomach and in the stomach there is the chloride (11:41 can’t quite grasp the word used here), there are the proteases that destroy most of the proteases but even there you have tricks, two tricks. The caseins which are proteins present in the milk, MAF 314 derives from milk and colostrums just like a regular yogurt, you start your preparation with whole milk. And so the caseins protect and ? the MAF 314. Since they are in huge amounts, it is as if they distract the proteolytic enzymes and the digestive enzymes of the stomach and so the digestive enzymes are busy destroying the caseins and they let some GcMAF pass through.
(12:24) Then there is another trick that we discovered during these three hundred and some experiments. That is, if you eat or drink the MAF 134 after you have eaten a meal rich in fibres like a salad, a typical Caesar salad if you are in the United States, a typical Italian salad if you are in Italy, it doesn’t make any difference, if you drink it, drink the MAF 314 after a meal rich in fibres, all the fibres which are made of cellulose, they will protect a part of the GcMAF as if it was a gastro resistant pill. Gastro resistant pills are made of cellulose and fibres are made of cellulose. Therefore, another part of GcMAF would pass unaltered the stomach barrier.
(13:14) And then it arrives in your gut. And in your gut there is probably the highest absolute number of macrophages in this so called GALT, Gut Associated Lymphoid Tissue. The GcMAF that you have ingested with the MAF 314 will stimulate again all of these (13:34 can’t understand this word).
(13:35) But probably this is not the most important or the most beneficial effect of the MAF 314. As happens many times in science, just out of serendipity, we discovered something that made us very, very excited. At the end of the preparation, I asked that a student of mine just to draw a list of all the bacteria that we had introduced in this yogurt in order to produce the GcMAF because I was afraid that if we didn’t write them down, we would forget them and so this would not have been a good thing. When you do one or two experiments a day, you have to keep very orderly records otherwise you lose track of what you’re doing and this happens unfortunately quite often.
(14:23) So I asked this very brilliant young student to write down the list of the bacteria that we had used in the final and the most efficacious preparation and the sequence. Only at that point, we realized that this array of bacteria was almost identical to the array of bacteria that’s present in the so called gut microbiome of the infant.
(14:52) What is the gut microbiome? Microbiome is a new term in science that indicates the society of microbes, the bacteria, yeasts and probably viruses too that live in symbiosis with us. Now it is known that there are ten times more bacterial cells in our body than our own human cells. So we are made of several billions of human cells and ten times more bacterial cells. And these bacteria are extremely beneficial to us. We couldn’t live without them. So we are more bacteria than human. And this has been realized in the past few years. Actually there are projects at the NIH called the Human Microbiome Projects just to study this issue.
(15:43) Now the gut microbiome is a part of the human microbiome and indicates all the bacteria that are present in our gut. Where do these bacteria come from? Of course they come from what we eat and what we drink. But there is one peculiarity. Most mammals, regardless of whether they are dogs, humans, monkeys or cats, when they are newborn, they have almost the identical microbiome. And the explanation is very simple. All mammals by definition drink milk. Otherwise, they’re not mammals. So the mammals are (?) by the fact that the females produce milk and this is the first food for all mammals. Not all milks are equal but they’re very similar and it has been known for thousands of years that human newborns can drink easily cow’s milk with little problem. Of course, it is best if they drink their mother’s milk but the milk is not identical but very, very similar in all the different mammals. Therefore, it makes sense that newborn mammals have almost the same identical microbiome.
(17:04) What is the purpose of producing the colostrum in the very first days of life of the mammal? It is not the purpose of nutrition because colostrum is not as nutrient as milk and as a matter of fact, all human newborns are in the first two or three days they lose weight. Most mothers are very preoccupied about this but this is completely physiological. The reasons are several but one of the reasons is the colostrums is not as rich in nutrients as the regular milk that comes only after three, four, five days depends on the species, after giving birth to the child or calf or whatever.
(17:55) The principle goal of Colostrum is not to provide nutrient but to provide immunity because it is most important the newborn survives and then it will have time to grow. So colostrum is very rich in immunogenic factors and Gc protein is one of those immunogenic factors. So we only realized after having been successful in producing GcMAF, that was our primary goal, only at that point we realized we had reconstituted the (?18:32 reproduced?) newborn mammal microbiome. At that point, we were very excited about this and we decided to go one step further.
(18:45) Now the MAF 314 can be easily prepared in your home kitchen. You transform a part of your home kitchen into a biochemistry laboratory. You have to be very careful, very precise, very (?) but you can transform any kitchen into a biochemistry laboratory. And you will have glass jars that you can buy at every kitchen supply store that become bioreactors as we call them. It’s a huge name just to say there are bacteria over there that will transform, will perform a biochemical reaction, that is to transform something into something else. But bioreactor sounds very scientific. Good! But then we decided why don’t we transform our own gut into a bioreactor. So in the MAF 314 we introduced bacteria that will colonize our gut and will remain there as part of our microbiome. And actually those bacteria were there when we were born and then with all the corrupted food, with all the chemicals, with all the additives, probably most of them have been killed, who knows, so we are just reintroducing the bacteria that were there when we were newborns. And those bacteria, they colonize, that is they live there, they remain there, they are very happy to be there, and they will keep on producing the GcMAF inside your gut and from what? From whatever we eat or drink that contains even trace amounts of Gc protein. So the MAF 314 now goes to recursion as we call it in science. Recursion is one thing inside another thing, like a hologram, a small picture inside a big picture that represents the small picture itself, because there is GcMAF in the MAF 314, we have determined this chemically and there is a lot of GcMAF. But not only that, there are D bacteria that will produce the GcMAF inside our gut starting from the Gc protein that we introduced both with the MAF 314 and with an ice cream that contains milk or whatever contains the Gc protein. So this was a very interesting result that was not anticipated at all, was not our goal at first. We realized this only after having produced this MAF 314 but it was very, very welcome.
(21:26) So how does all this relate to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Are we experts at Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? I would say now we know a little bit but at that time, we didn’t know that much at all. I must confess that we had not worked on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the past year. I mean, we began to work on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome only since June or July 2011. Until then we had been working mainly on cancer, on chronic kidney disease, which is also related to the immune system and Vitamin D and we did immune deficiencies like AIDS. But we had not been working on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at all and we knew little about it to be honest.
(22:13) But at that point we were contacted by doctors all over the world who were fascinated by the use of the chemical GcMAF to treat the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because of the immunogenic properties of the chemical GcMAF. But these doctors, as we had experienced, had difficulty in obtaining the GcMAF and, most importantly, difficulty in administering a foreign protein not authorized as a drug. And so as soon as they recognized the potential for a probiotic yogurt enriched in GcMAF and producing GcMAF in our gut, they immediately recognized the potential for a treatment for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
(23:03) At that point we were contacted by Dr. Paul Cheney from Asheville, North Carolina. We established in a very, very rapid time frame a very productive collaboration and during the months of July, August and September, Professor Stephania Pacini (spelling confirmed) and myself moved to North Carolina and we began producing the MAF 314 for a number of patients attending the Cheney Clinic for treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. We produced this MAF 314 and we gave it to these number of patients.
(23:40) Our first goal was just to do a small scale trial that was just to observe the results. So we were producing the MAF 314 and the Cheney Clinic was shipping it to all the patients that enrolled in this study. However, our goal was just to do this for one month and then collect the results and observe what the results were. The point was that after two or three weeks, many of these patients began to report such astonishing improvement in their symptoms, not yet in their blood analysis, because their blood analysis were scheduled only after one month of consumption. But after two or three weeks, several of them reported significant, sometimes dramatic, improvement in their symptoms. People who had been bedridden were able to drive eight hours to Asheville, North Carolina. People who had been bedridden for years were able to fly to restore their normal lives.
(24:47) So all these people began to be worried, sometimes even with some degree of anxiety, what would happen to them after the study was over because our original plan was to come back to Italy, and then collect the data, analyze, (?) the data, maybe write a paper, present it at some Congress. However, we realized that we could not leave these people without this probiotic yogurt that produced such dramatic effects. I will make this story short. We realized that the quickest way to provide this MAF 314 to these people was not to sell it, was not to produce it, we are not a pharmaceutical company, we are unable to do this, we are not even a food industry that we are able to do this. So the quickest and easiest way, even limited to small numbers, we realized this, but it was quick and most important it was feasible, was to teach these people how to produce the MAF 314 in their home kitchens. So that’s what we did in Asheville. That’s what we are doing right now in Austria or in Germany.
(26:05) Tonight I’m about to leave to go to Germany just to hold a course where I will teach both to physicians and to patients, in this case not CFS patients but patients suffering a lot of pathologies, how to prepare the MAF 314 so that their physicians can observe their symptoms, hopefully their improvement or the side effects, if there are any, and then keep on collecting data and keep on verifying whether this effect are seen in observing old people or maybe they are limited to a small subset of patients or what.
(26:44) So this is where we are now. We can say that now our observation is in the tens, not even in the hundreds. So probably there are less than one hundred people all over the world who are consuming the MAF 314 that they are preparing. You cannot buy it and nobody is producing it. You have to prepare it at home. So there is less than 100 people all over the world who are consuming it. The longest period of observation is since the end of August so it’s only five months so this is very, very preliminary data, and we have to be careful not to overemphasize anything. This is a good probiotic yogurt that stimulates the immune system period. That’s the only thing that we can say. We cannot say that it cures any disease. We are observing a lot of positive effects but we have to verify if these are placebo effects. I don’t think so because I see in many different patients with different pathologies but still this has to be scientifically verified. And we are not yet at the time to verify anything because the numbers are extremely limited, less than one hundred. The time frame is also limited, less than six months.
(27:58) So now we’re just simply collecting impressions, feelings, people who report to feel better. In some people we see blood analysis improving depending on the pathology. Many people report an increase in strength. Some people report that they recover from some symptoms. People who are consuming the MAF 314 while at the same time assuming chemotherapy for cancer, for example , they report a significant improvement of the side effects of chemotherapy. Some patients report a complete abolishment of the side effects. Again, is this a placebo affect? We don’t know. In any event, it is very welcomed by the patient. The patient is not a scientist so the patient doesn’t care whether it is the placebo affect or not.
(28:47) We have a patient in Austria who is at the third cycle of chemotherapy. The first two cycles without MAF 314 were really dramatic – terrifying. The third one has been as drinking pure water he says. So is this the placebo affect? Is this that his body has become accustomed to chemotherapy? Who knows? Is this due to the MAF 314? Hopefully so! In any event, this patient now is tolerating the chemotherapy very, very well. He is happy and so that’s the most important thing to us. Time will tell us.”
