Michael Marquardt on Breakthroughs in Early Cancer Detection EP 497
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Coming up next on Passion Struck. I firmly believe we're at an inflection point in terms of the amount of resources that have gone into cancer research. When I meet young researchers, old researchers, I can see it in their eyes. They're saying, we're starting to figure this out. I was introduced about a year and a half ago

to a woman in New York City that had made a discovery that the best way I can explain it to your listeners is that there's a section of the DNA molecule, section of the genome, that has been forgotten by science. It's a big molecule. And you say, "Yeah, yeah, that part we don't really worry about." And she discovered it's an epigenetic section of the DNA molecules, maybe the way to say it, that when cells turn cancerous, at the very beginning, when it's really stage zero,

When cells turn cancerous, there is a signal, it's not a radio signal, but almost like a signal that starts broadcasting on that part of the DNA molecule that is so strong that if you know what you're looking for, if you don't know what you're looking for, you'll never hear it or you'll never see it. But if you know what you're looking for, you can actually detect it with very standard laboratory equipment. And so when you first hear this, you're like, wow, there's no way.

And frankly, that was my reaction. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the

power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passionately

passion struck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 497 of passion struck consistently ranked one of the top health podcasts in the world. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every single week eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better to be better and to make a meaningful impact in the world.

you're new to the show thank you so much for joining us today or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member and we so appreciate it when you do that we have episode starter packs which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we put into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to the rich content that we have here on this podcast especially now that we're approaching 500 episodes it's so important to use these playlists to find

our best episodes. You can do so at Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs. Before we dive into today's incredible episode, I received incredible news that my book Passion Struck won Best Business Book and Best E-Book

at the International Business Awards, known as the Stevie Awards. For those who aren't familiar, the Stevie Awards are the world's premier business awards and are equivalent to winning an Oscar. We also won gold and silver medals at the Global Book Awards and hit

the top 50 books in the Amazon Kindle store. You can purchase the book anywhere that you buy books. And recently it's been on sale for 99 cents, but that sale is ending soon. In case you missed it earlier in the week, I interviewed the Unstoppable Halataha, host of the Young and Profiting podcast and a powerhouse entrepreneur.

Tune in as we dive into her journey from corporate ladder climber to media mogul and discuss the secrets behind her success. That episode was packed with insights on hustling with purpose, building your brand and living life on your own terms. Check it out in case you missed it. And if you liked

that previous episode or today's. We so appreciate it when you give us five-star ratings and reviews. This is what brings people back to the podcast and makes it so much more popular. They also go such a long way in strengthening the Passion Star community where we can help more people to create an intentional life. We're also always on the lookout for other guests like the one I'm about ready to announce and topics that you would like

to hear on the show. We and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today, I am so honored to have my very good friend, Michael McCourt, a visionary leader and CEO of EpiOne, a biotech startup on a mission to revolutionize early cancer detection and accurate diagnosis. And as my regular listeners know, I like to dedicate episodes when I find them to everything cancer. And this episode

is such an important episode for anyone who knows anyone with cancer or in general, who's interested in the early diagnosis of cancer. Michael's journey is one of resilience and dedication. He was born in West Berlin, Germany and experienced firsthand the impact

of a divided world and the power of unity. In 1991, he moved to the United States, where he pursued higher education and ultimately became an American citizen. Appointed by President Biden in 2022, Michael now serves on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.

Professionally, Michael has made significant contributions to the fight against cancer. As the immediate past chair of the American Cancer Society, he has played a pivotal role in advancing cancer research and support. His leadership has been instrumental in various committees within the American Cancer Society, including the board's governance committee, the human capital committee, and the nominating subcommittee.

Michael's dedication to cancer advocacy is deeply personal. After losing his first wife and other loved ones to cancer, he's been driven by a profound commitment to end this devastating disease for everyone. This personal loss fuels his passion for making early cancer detection accessible and affordable for all. Now as the CEO of EpiOne, Michael is at the forefront of healthcare innovation. EpiOne is pioneering disruptive DNA-based technologies in biomarker identification,

enabling early cancer detection, post diagnosis monitoring and prognosis assessment through a simple diagnostic kit. Their PCR tests boast a remarkable 95% you heard that right 95% accuracy in tissue biopsy and 70% accuracy in early blood samples making them a game changer in cancer diagnostics.

Join us as we delve into Michael McQuart's groundbreaking work at EpiOne, his significant contributions to the American Cancer Society, and how his personal journey and losses have shaped his mission to end cancer as we know it. Michael and I recorded this episode in person

And it promises to be a compelling and inspiring conversation for anyone who's dedicated to transforming their life or others they know who are suffering from cancer. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

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We'll help protect it all. And the more you cover, the more you can save. Amica. Empathy is our best policy.

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I am so absolutely thrilled to have Michael Marquardt on PassionStruck. Michael, it is so nice to see you. You and I have been talking about doing this for a long time. It's great to be here, John. Thank you. Well, I am so excited for the audience to get to know you. And you have such an interesting story. So I think it is a great starting point for the audience to get to know you, to start

with the fact that you grew up in Germany. And the back story is your father is a doctor, and at the time you were growing up in the '70s, not a lot of people really wanted to move to West Germany, given what was happening. And your father got this appointment to become the head of a hospital there.

and ended up accepting it. But I'll use that maybe as a teaser. Can you discuss what happened and what was going through your mind at the time? Sure. I mean, John, think about the fact that we're in the middle of the Cold War, which is an abstract to most people that are like, "What does that really mean?" But it means that there was a standoff between the West and the East. And probably the place that this was the most evident was

Berlin, which was then former capital of Germany. The capital had moved to Bonn after World War II. And Berlin, of course, was divided by the Berlin Wall. And I would say my dad, who was, as you said, was a physician, a surgeon, had been educated in the Cologne area. My mother was a nurse. Accepting a hospital appointment in Berlin, West Berlin, it's

It's a little bit like taking a job in Baghdad. Really, you're going to move there? Surrounded by Soviet troops, like the city was divided into the American, the French and the British sector. There were tanks in the streets. And so he was offered a double promotion, is probably the best way to put it, because typically in the medical world, it's pretty regimented. You move from assistant physician to the next job to the next job, and he was basically given

a very high post to make it more appealing to come to the then semi-occupied city of Berlin, where I grew up.

We're going to talk more about the city of Berlin, but your dad went on to become a really famous physician. Maybe I've got it wrong, but didn't he become the physician for many of the leading politicians? Yeah, it was interesting. My dad became the chief surgeon at Berlin's largest hospital. And what was happening is that... And he was a full professor, which is pretty rare in the German medical world in terms of being able to be in private practice. A little bit later, when the capital moved from Bonn back to Berlin,

Everybody's looking for... Everybody needed a urologist, everybody needed a personal physician. And he had to really build a really strong reputation, so he became the physician to much of Berlin's elite for decades.

amazing backdrop. I want to go back though to Germany at that time because it had to be a really interesting perspective for you growing up, seeing the wall every single day, knowing that people on the other side have a completely different life because before they put up the wall, I think there were like 3 million

Germans who crossed, which was the whole reason that they put this 90-mile place. What was it like living in that environment? Well, so I was born in 1970, and when I was a toddler, let's say, first of all, I didn't know that

having a wall surrounding your city was anything unusual. I thought, I mean, that's what you grow up with, right? And so I remember reading and hearing from our teachers that folks in the East or the East German government called it an anti-capitalist protection measure, that they were trying to protect themselves

themselves from capitalism, and that's why they built the wall. But we all knew, if that's true, then why are so many people trying to flee to come over to our side? The other thing I remember is that our elementary school teachers

would tell us that the most effective and cheapest weapon that the Soviets and the East Germans were using was disinformation, which kind of resonates with today. And I remember thinking about this, and they would tell us, if you're hearing a radio broadcast, if you're seeing something on TV, don't necessarily believe it. Obviously, there was no Internet then, but because the East was very much trying to make their...

citizens believe that they're living in paradise and there's nothing that you'd possibly want in the West and what you might see on television is not true. So that's definitely sort of the frame of mind that I grew up with. Well, you and I have both traveled a lot and I always think it's interesting when you see news programs outside the United States how different they are projecting world events but also how the world is seeing the United States. It's really interesting every time I've traveled.

So, you're here in Germany, and during that time, the United States had a lot of soldiers there, a lot of influence. How did that start becoming a kind of a teaser for you in your life? That's a great question, John. It's hard, again, to picture this when you didn't live it, but I grew up with American

music, radio, films, a lot of the American TV shows that played in the US in that era, even things like Dallas or Dynasty, which most people have forgotten, but also things like Columbo. They were dubbed into German, and as a teenager, that's what I was watching on TV.

actually thinking it might be a German show, but then somebody saying, "Oh, no, it's from Hollywood." I said, "Oh, wow, Hollywood." And a lot of the music on AFN, which is Armed Forces Network Radio, was American music. And also, it was very clear to me as a young German growing up that if it hadn't been for the Americans, I might be learning Russian as my first language. And that's something that... I mean, that sticks with you. And so it was definitely...

I was imbued with a gratitude toward America and everything that America stands for from a very young age before even really being able to analyze it and think about it. So I think everyone has these moments in life. I knew exactly what I was doing when President Reagan was almost assassinated.

I remember when the Berlin Wall came down, I was a freshman at the Naval Academy, but you were at the epicenter of it when it came down. How did that historic monument and event impact your life and aspirations? It honestly, it is the most impactful sort of event that took place that was

outside of my control that formed me even more than 9/11 did affect all of us many years later. And in many ways because it was a positive event. It was some, I mean the Berlin Wall falling, I remember it like it was yesterday. I could talk about it for hours. But I think probably one of the, as I've analyzed it over the years, one of the things that has most stuck with me is that if you had asked 100 average Germans in the West or in the East

10 days before the Berlin Wall fell, if the wall is ever going to fall, when is it going to fall? I think 99 people would have said, "Not in our lifetime." And the takeaway from that, when it all of a sudden fell, I mean, we had no heads up this was happening. Again, there was no internet then. It's not like people were getting text messages or that people were getting alerts on their phone, "Hey, go to the wall." I mean, this was an organic energy that happened. And a takeaway for it is that

Things happen if behaviors change and things happen. Don't give up hope. I mean, so many times when I'm talking to young people, whether in Germany or whether in the U.S., I always react when somebody says, oh, well, this is always going to be this way. Oh, I can't get that job because people like me don't get that kind of job. Or, oh, I'm never going to travel there because people like me don't do that. I'm like, you know what? Have hope.

put your mind to it, and I think the East Germans, I mean, there was a lot of things going on, but there was an inevitability to it that wasn't apparent until it was happening. And it's definitely something that, I mean, I remember every minute of when I first found out that it was happening and how we all reacted to it. And I was in my last year of high school. I was basically six months from graduating from high school. All school was canceled for two weeks, which I thought was glorious. And the welcoming of all the Easterners that would come

They were coming across the wall in the days and the weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, and the attention of the world on the city was just, I mean, it was something I'll never forget. When it actually was happening, I remember the pictures of people just standing on the wall and also with hammers, like, trying to knock pieces of it down. Was it a party-like atmosphere for both sides, or was it more on the East German side? Oh, no, it was a party-like atmosphere, in many ways more on the West,

because the Easterns were not standing there like partying, they were trying to get across. It was the West that was welcoming everyone and probably the scene that rings most in my head in this regard, John, is that

So I was actually working that night. I was working as a security guard in a convention center. Last year, high school, trying to make some extra money, I was taking-- I had the 11:00 to 7:00 a.m. shift. The wall started crumbling right around as my shift started. And then as soon as I got off in the morning, I took the subway to as close to the Brandenburg Gate, which was like the center of the action and near the wall. And I came out of the subway-- this was like 6:30 in the morning.

pitch dark and I could already see champagne and beer bottles that were empty that were like lined up like all around the stairwell leading in and out of the subway and I came up and there it was like daylight because all the cleat lights from the television cameras were illuminating everything and there were people broadcasting live all over the world and it was definitely something is like wow this is monumental.

So here you are at the end of your high school year. You're pondering what you want to do education-wise. Did this event shape your decision to come to the United States to study? And if so, how? It's a good question. There are a lot of things that contributed to my making the decision to actually immigrate to the U.S. And I would say it was, on the one hand, if you think about what Germany was about to do in the aftermath of the Berlin Wall falling, the country was going to reunify, which happened

in October of the following year of 1990, there was a lot of things that were going to be happening. And I felt I had been to the U.S. as a teenager. I had been to the U.S. at that point, I think, twice. And I was just really attracted to everything that America stood for. And I said, I'm going to try and make my luck in the U.S. I want to do my own thing. I'll always come back to Germany. I was the only one in my family that moved. It's not like I've

I went with my parents or anything like that. But I do think that it was because of everything that I experienced and my sort of feeling, look, I want to make it on my own. And so moving a half a world away, in retrospect, people often say, wow, that was really courageous. I didn't think of it that way at the time. I was more thinking that, look, I really like everything that America stands for and that's where I want to live. And I felt that from the moment that I came to the U.S., I felt at home.

So you came here around 1991-ish? Yeah, in May of '91. And then you became a citizen in 2002? Correct, yes. What was that path like? Because I imagine along that journey there were many times where you could have gone back to Germany and made that decision to do that. What made you stay here?

I fell in love with America, honestly, from day one. I remember arriving at JFK. It was May 14th of 1991. I will never forget it. And I was 20 years old. I was wearing a suit. This is my first day in America. And so I have to say that, I mean, the journey then was one that had...

There were tragic aspects to it, which I know we'll get into, but I went through college quite quickly because I got credit for a lot of my German high school work, which is really, even to this day, quite a bit more advanced than American high schools. It's just a different curriculum. So I was able to get through college in two and a half years.

just getting credit for German education, and then to graduate school. And in terms of the path to citizenship, it's interesting. There is one of the pathways. It's just you're in the country, you become a permanent resident at some point. I'd come on a student visa, and then you become a permanent resident. And in my case, I got married to Linda, who was really the love of my life. I'd met her quite a few years before that, even when I was still living in Germany, even though she was an American.

What happened is that we had, after we were married, we applied for citizenship, or I applied for citizenship, like, several years after. There's a timeline to this, just like there is today. And very tragically, Linda got very sick, and we'll come back to that, but she passed away, so I actually lost my sponsor.

And I got a very cold letter from the government saying that we've canceled your citizenship application because you no longer have a sponsor. And I mean, I have to say it took my breath away because I was already, I would say, near suicidal just with everything that had happened to my wife. But then to get that sort of like thin letter from what was then the INS, the Immigration Naturalization Service, saying that, well, you no longer have a sponsor. And now what ended up happening is that

It just meant that I had to observe additional time frames, and so I ended up becoming a U.S. citizen two years after that.

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So, since you brought up your first wife, let's go there. So, the way you and I know each other is actually with your current wife. Claire and I sat next to each other when we both worked at Catalina Marketing, and I remember one of the first times that upon meeting you, I heard about your first wife, and it was a touching moment for both of us because, and I don't think I've ever talked about this on the podcast,

But I was engaged initially to my high school sweetheart who died of a really rare form of cancer. And so when you had told me your story, I think I remember telling you I might be one of the few people who can actually empathize with you because we both lost people when we were young. And I just remember

with Amy, she had this, and this will lead to what you're doing now in your life, but she had had this bump on her foot that they just thought was just a callous or maybe an internal growth. No one ever expected it to be cancer, and then she ended up having the same type of cancer that Ted Kennedy's, that one of the Kennedy sons had.

And once it was discovered, looking back, she could have amputated her leg. She didn't want to because she was at the time a model and it just spread through her lymph nodes and beyond. And it was just such a quick process when I look back upon it. And I think you're

previous wife went through a fast process too, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was 17 and a half months. And coming out of something like that, it just changes you forever. So how did that eventually lead you to becoming interested in serving the American Cancer Society?

Yeah, I mean, just to talk about that, I already from a schooling perspective, educational perspective, had studied biochemistry, molecular genetics, molecular biology. I had basically been pre-med in college and then went into graduate school into chemistry and biochemistry.

I've always had, I think maybe as the son of a surgeon, like we talked about, and a nurse, I mean, everybody in my family has a medical or science background. I'd always had an affinity to the sciences. But then when I came to America and after school, I got affectionately, say, sucked into the tech industry. And that's the job that I had. I was running a tech company when my first wife first was diagnosed. And she first was diagnosed with breast cancer. And we thought she'd been very vigilant with her mammography and with her screenings and everything. And so, well, God,

caught it early, and the first parts of the treatment were very successful. But then it turned out that she had gotten not one cancer, breast cancer, but two cancers at the same time that were not related, which was not on anybody's playbook. And it turned out that she'd also had a kidney cancer at the same time, which is very rare. And that had not been discovered right at the same time. And that's what she died of. And it was a vicious tumor. And so what happened is that

I was in the middle of running this tech company. Actually, I resigned because I didn't think I could do it justice. I took care of her. She was my only family in this country at the time. And so I poured myself into just being her caregiver. And then after that, actually co-founded a company called Mediguide that provides

independent second opinions from world leading medical centers to people at a distance. Just if you don't live near Sloan Kettering or one of the top medical centers, MD Anderson or others, people often ask, God, is there something else we could do? Did I leave a stone unturned? And I felt like we actually had not. I mean, I felt very fortunate that she had great care. It just was not

meant for her to survive. But even though my day job became one that was very much concerned about how you can help individuals and their families that are dealing with terminal diseases, I still needed another outlet. I mean, I felt like my whole brain was geared toward needing an additional outlet. And so I started volunteering for different cancer groups, not just the American Cancer Society was actually not the first one I started volunteering. One of the things that's interesting, John,

I haven't talked about in a while is that in the United States, so this was 22, 23 years ago, people weren't as open about cancer as they are now. I mean, there were people that I had observed in workplaces that wouldn't tell their supervisor or their manager or their coworker that, oh, I'm dealing with cancer or my wife's dealing with cancer.

And so one of the earliest volunteer assignments I had with the American Cancer Society was as part of a CEO's group to encourage other CEOs to give their employees time off for screenings, for colonoscopies, for mammography, and not to make it too hard.

and also to support them more openly when they're dealing with cancer. And what's interesting now is I, you and I have traveled extensively around the world. There are still big differences around the world, including let's say Germany, since we've talked about Germany. Germans in general are a little more privacy minded. And I know people, even with my background and having been open about what I've dealt with in my life, I've met people at clients in Germany or in France. I find out, oh yeah,

She passed away. I'm like, "Wow, what happened?" "She had been battling cancer for the last two years." I'm like, "I never knew. Nobody ever said anything." "Oh, we didn't know either." I'm like, "You didn't know?" And it's tough. I mean, it breaks my heart when I see people suffering alone because I definitely can speak for myself that having support from others

to help you through a battle like that. And the aftermath of a battle like that makes all the difference. We'll talk about my sister later, but I-- having just gone through four years of her battling pancreatic cancer, I can't imagine if she'd had to do that alone. In fact, it was all the friends and her community that I think helped keep her going as long as they did. The meals that they brought, the massages, all those things mattered so much to her. So I can't imagine

Doing something like that in isolation that would be almost the worst thing you could do is but this still happens a lot And there are people that blame themselves, you know for getting cancer. What did I do wrong? There's different religions, of course I mean there's different viewpoints on this but yeah I can completely that resonates with me what you went through with your sister so a lot of the listeners and viewers may not be Familiar with what I mean they've heard of the American Cancer Society, but they may not be familiar

familiar with what the organization really does behind the scenes. I was hoping because you were the most recent chairman, maybe you could talk through what the organization does and why they're so vital. Absolutely. Well, I will say first of all that the American Cancer Society, I love talking about this organization, is over 110 years old. As many of my friends on the board and other volunteers and colleagues know, one of my favorite statistics of the American Cancer Society that America has not heard

is that we're known for research, we're known for investing money in research, but what most people don't know is that we do a lot of grants to young researchers, young cancer researchers. And at this point, over the last, I think it's 65 or 70 years, we have funded, given grants to 50 young researchers who've gone on to win the Nobel Prize. - 50? - 50.

That's incredible. And there is nobody else who can say that. And of course, giving grants to thousands of researchers. But I often say that that's a pretty good batting average. And oftentimes I've met quite a few of those Nobel laureates. They will say, oh, everybody remembers when somebody gave them their first chance. And people often think, oh, these people, they're well-educated. They are obviously brilliant researchers. People must just be giving them grants and money left and right. That's not the usual experience for most researchers that are coming out of

Whatever school, they're setting up their lab. They're for the first time trying to, they have a theory. Maybe this is what's causing cancer. Maybe there's a way that we can disrupt this. And then they get turned down and they get turned down again and they get turned down again. And so the American Cancer Society, our vision is to end cancer as we know it for everyone. And the for everyone is very important here because one of the causes that really has also resonated with me beyond trying to

end cancer through research and so forth, is also the fact that where you live should not determine if you live. And for a lot of people, for millions of Americans and millions of people around the world, it's not having access to the standard of care

versus having access to some sort of new Nobel laureate medical genius, new drug, new treatment that just is in clinical trial. It's the fact that somebody lives in a zip code or lives in a part of the country where the actual standard of care that might be available at Bethesda, Maryland, or in New York or in Dallas will not be available in their community. So the American Cancer Society has three pillars, we call them. One is research.

One is patient support. So it's all the things that you go through as a patient. Having somebody to drive you to treatments. Having a free place to stay near a major medical center like in downtown Manhattan. Try, if you don't live in New York City, try and get a hotel room. I mean, who will pay for that for six months going through a clinical trial at Sloan Kettering, let's say? And then the third pillar,

is advocacy, and that is maybe a fancy way of saying appealing and convincing politicians in our state capitals and in Washington to do the right thing when it comes to public policy and health policy, including things like putting labels on

cigarettes to say, hey, don't smoke, it'll kill you. And as well as having Medicare, Medicaid pay for colorectal screening and things like that because it just makes good sense. It makes good public policy sense. I want to explore a couple of those in more depth. The second pillar, I think, is an important one. And there's a friend of mine who lives in St. Pete named Bill Potts who

himself has battled cancer six times now. And he wrote this book basically to give people who are diagnosed with cancer a guidebook to how to navigate life with cancer. But I think his guidebook is really profound regardless of what ailment you might have because at the center of it is really this approach that you need to be the CEO of your healthcare journey.

One of the most pivotal things that he talks about is you need to treat your cancer journey as if it's a business because it really becomes it. I mean, you're booking flights. You're having to do all this investigative work. If you need surgery, where do you need to go? Where are the best centers to do it? If you have to go into clinical trials, where are they? How do you find out about them? How do you become qualified for them? Because there are all these...

processes that people don't understand. And sometimes the timeline that you need, the system doesn't work as quickly as you need it. So how was ACS trying to do more awareness around that topic? You framed it really well because, I mean, most people are not prepared for that cancer journey. And thank God, most people will never need to be prepared. But the way we call that in the American Cancer Society is the concept of navigation.

navigating that cancer journey and so we have cancer navigators around the country as well as through our hundred number and of course the website. The cancer.org is the most highly visited website in the health space period around the world because it's independent information that's available so I was just diagnosed with let's say

X cancer, what are the what's the checklist of the 20 things that I got to keep in mind and what are some best practices that I got to keep in mind and so that's something that ACS is fantastic at because and nobody needs to worry is this information coming from a drug company that's really trying to get me into one of their trials or is this and not that they're evil the drug companies but I mean people wonder and I mean it's the old saying about if you ask a barber if you need a haircut

you know the answer you're going to get. I've talked with my dad often about the fact that you have a cancer diagnosis and you ask a surgeon, what should you do? Surgeon's going to say, oh, cut it out. You ask a medical oncologist, oh, no, don't cut it out. We'll do chemotherapy. You ask a radiation oncologist, oh, no, don't do either one of those two. We'll do radiation on it.

And obviously, not all can be true, right? And so oftentimes you need independent information. You need somebody that has been through that journey professionally. Just like with anything else, I mean, if you're trying to book a complicated trip, you may want to go to a country you've never been. It might be good to have a travel agent that's done that 20 times over in the last year.

And in the same way, I think if you're battling a, especially a, there's very few people that have standard cancer diagnosis. It's much more common that there's something else. Oh, they're also diabetic. They also have this autoimmune thing that's in their family. They're not sure if that's going to be a factor. It turns out that they're in between jobs. They're worrying what COBRA pays for this. And their wife has another insurance, but they also are a veteran. Who do I need to call?

It's complicated. And so I think that, I mean, we had a former member of the board, he's no longer on the board, but great guy. He's based in Washington. He said, "America needs the American Cancer Society." And we have millions of people that we help every year. We're the largest nonprofit in the space. And so, I mean, it's been one of the honors of my life to be a volunteer, to serve on the board. I've served on the board since 2018 and to be chair of the board.

So, a lot is going on in the cancer space. So, on a positive note, some of the largest, most common cancers, the survival rate is going up significantly, especially with breast cancer, which we talked about, and colon cancer. There are other cancers where it's not happening as quickly, and this gets into early detection, which we're going to be talking a lot more about here in a second.

The other issue that's going on is more and more people are getting cancer. And not just the common cancers but cancers that used to be rare are becoming more common.

When you were on the board, did you get access to information on why they think this is happening? Absolutely. I mean, and we actually have done something that this may get a little inside baseball-y, but we've done several studies for decades that are what are called really epidemiological studies. So we follow hundreds of thousands of healthy people, like people like you and me, and we follow them for decades. And some fill out questionnaires. A lot of this is now based on apps and stuff.

But you basically say, okay, how often do you exercise? What do you eat? What are your other habits? How much do you sleep? All those kinds of things. And then you try and discern patterns to say, wow, and people in this part of the country, maybe is there a radiation source nearby while they're getting these kinds of cancers? This type of work actually is what led to, in the late 60s and 70s, the American Cancer Society being the first really reputable organization that made the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.

There had been no direct link established prior to that, but it was based on these large cohort studies. They sort of said, "Well, we got 200,000 people that smoke, and their lung cancer rate is this much higher than this, and you try and figure these things out." But what's interesting is that I had one of our researchers say to me-- Gosh, this was probably two or three years ago-- He said, "Sitting is the new smoking, and how things stick with you." So that seems like an outrageous thing to say. I mean, smoking's obviously bad, and here we are sitting. And-- But the point was really that, actually,

activity or lack thereof is a very major risk factor that has been not properly understood. And I think a lot of it has to do with your blood circulating. There's a cleansing effect that comes from your blood circulating. And if you're just not lazy, but if you're just like inactive, that can have as big an impact on your health, negative impact on your health as smoking cigarettes. And so I think

to your point of like why are more people getting it seems like more people are getting cancers and cancers that are more rare we're still working to figure that out but the hypotheses that I've heard have been related primarily due to like more western lifestyles and this is happening around the world sometimes I hate to say it but it breaks my heart when I go to a

someplace halfway around the world and even a developing country, and I see a fast-food restaurant from, clearly, with a U.S. brand, I'm saying, "God, we're exporting the worst things." And these people used to eat fresh, local foods, and now you have obesity and other things. But the other thing that may be important to say, John,

Talk about cancer, singular, C-A-N-C-E-R. Cancer, there are 200 plus diseases that we call cancer. And out of those 200 plus, you already alluded to this, there are dozens that have already moved into the category of essentially being manageable diseases. You get that diagnosis and it's not

The doctor telling you, "Okay, call your estate attorney and put your affairs in order." It's more, "Okay, we caught this at an okay time. There is a treatment for this. You're probably going to be on this treatment perhaps for the rest of your life, but not to downplay it, but it might be not that different from diabetes. Okay, you're going to manage this?"

And you're going to be OK. You're going to be able to travel. You're going to be there for your kids' graduations and weddings and so forth. But there are quite a few of those 200-plus cancers that are not yet in that category. And you're right. For obvious reasons, the researchers and the dollars that are going into cancer research are focused on the ones that are affecting the most people. So the patients and the families that I often feel the worst for are the ones who are getting some rare cancer that doesn't

doesn't have a lot of effort behind it, so nobody's working on this. And so they're stuck with a treatment protocol that was designed in the '70s, and it doesn't work for everyone. Well, I think what you were saying beforehand, not just the sedentary lifestyle that we have, but you and I both know from traveling in other countries. I remember when I lived in Spain, the thing that struck me right off

from the beginning of my time there was the Spaniards didn't shop like we do in the United States. They didn't go to a supermarket and buy their goods for a week. I mean they would go there for one meal, maybe two meals. And I have had so many people on this podcast who have been studying ancestral diet compared to the way that we're eating now and all the preservatives and everything else that

are in our foods and I can't help but not think that chemical influxion and not eating

things that we're hunter and gathering for is having a profound difference as well. I think there's no question. I'm laughing because this is an ongoing joke in our marriage now because I have a hard time shopping for like a whole week because I didn't grow up that way. In Germany, you go to the store every afternoon and my wife thinks that's nuts. Let's go on the weekend and buy stuff for the week. And she's right. I mean, it's much more efficient. But on the other hand, I don't know what I'm going to want to eat tomorrow evening. Exactly.

Well, just for the audience, if you're wanting to get more information on this, I've had Mark Hyman on this podcast twice, Kara Fitzgerald, Morley Robbins, Chris Kenobi, Terry Walls, Michael Greger. So a lot of Will Cole, lots of episodes that you can go back and learn more about the impact of diet on and the way you're living on your chances of not only getting cancer, but

autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, et cetera. And maybe let me just cut in for one second. Those are all great individuals. I think what your listeners need to know, in my opinion, is that we're still discovering. And as much as we're all products of how we grew up and everything else, there's science happening every day.

and the pH in your blood. I know Mark talks about that and acidic versus basic things. And I mean, we're living at a time in history where research is advancing the ball every day. And don't think that nothing's ever going to change. Like, we're learning things. And I encourage everyone to be on the lookout for the latest research that's being discovered and then take note.

Absolutely, a great thought because it is changing all the time. So I want to go back to my sister here for a second. So Carolyn had pancreatic cancer, which the life expectancy with those having it is going up. I remember a few years ago it was a five-year survival rate in the single digits. It's now 11 or 12 percent. But in her type of cancer, I hate to say this, but if it is not detected early enough,

The most effective way to treat it is to get something called a Whipple surgery, which means they take out a portion of your stomach, your liver, your pancreas. But patients who have had that have survived for decades afterwards, some of them. But if they're not able to perform that, your five-year survival rate goes down

to 1%. And even as I talk to PanCan, who's putting tons of resources into advocacy, like you were talking about, the third pillar and everything else, early detection is the hardest thing for pancreatic cancer because it's a hard cancer to discover.

So this leads me to you have recently become the CEO of a company called EpiOne, which is really trying to pioneer and revolutionize cancer detection. What sets EpiOne apart? Because this is something that

I mean, is really the holy grail. If you can do early detection, it opens, not just for pancreatic cancer, but for all cancers, so many more modalities to elongate life. I tell you, John, I mean, what I say over and over again, having been through it myself, you've been through it yourself, as seeing loved ones going through this,

The only thing really that you want to hear after you hear either that you yourself have been diagnosed with cancer or that your wife or your mother or good friend has been diagnosed with cancer is that, "But we caught it really early." And that's really the next sentence, the very next sentence that you want to hear is, "But we caught it early."

whenever somebody talks about a cancer diagnosis. And then after that, it's like, well, and it's the good kind of leukemia, or that's what you're hoping to hear after that, maybe. And so what's happened is that, first of all, back to the research, and I firmly believe we're at an inflection point

in terms of the amount of resources that have gone into cancer research over the last sort of hundred years. And when I meet young researchers, old researchers, I can see it in their eyes that they're saying, "We're starting to figure this out." So with that backdrop, I'll just say that I was introduced about a year and a half ago

to a woman in New York City that had made a discovery that the best way I can explain it to your listeners is that there's a section of the DNA molecule, section of the genome, that has been forgotten by science. It's a big molecule. And you say, "Yeah, that part we don't really worry about." And she discovered it's an epigenetic section of the DNA molecules, maybe the way to say it, that when cells turn cancerous, at the very beginning, when it's really stage zero,

When cells turn cancerous, there is a signal, almost like a... It's not a radio signal, but almost like a signal that starts broadcasting on that part of the DNA molecule that is so strong that if you know what you're looking for... If you don't know what you're looking for, you'll never hear it or you'll never see it. But if you know what you're looking for, you can actually detect it with very standard laboratory equipment. And so when you first hear this, you're like...

Wow, there's no way. And frankly, that was my reaction. And we talked about the American Cancer Society. I've been involved in, I mean, not just there, but in other areas with groundbreaking clinical research. Feels like my whole life, but at least for a couple of decades. And I was a doubting Thomas, I would say, as a good Germanist. And this can't be real. And as I looked into it further, I was like, my God, there's something here.

And so I decided that, I mean, after long deliberation, about to be 54, and like, this might be what I was put on this earth to do is to build this company. And nothing has ever resonated with me as strongly as this has. And so over the past year, I became the CEO of the company. We are working out of a lab in Brooklyn. There is groundbreaking science happening there every week.

and we've received our first patent. We've been raising money, of course. We actually... I think one of the themes you've heard me talk about is both of us, I think, as early adopters, and we always look for what's the newest thing or what's the latest thing. And one of the trends that I've seen in venture capital and in sort of funding start-ups is actually equity crowdfunding. So in addition to our traditional source of capital, which we've also brought in, we've also opened this up to the people. So we actually have, at this point, over 150 shareholders.

who have invested as little as $500 and as much as $100,000. And that's when we launched a crowdfunding campaign on a LA-based engine called StartEngine. I think this is the future of sort of the way entrepreneurship grows because it's very democratic. We're completely transparent. We've put all of our financials on the internet.

Anybody can look at it. This is the kind of thing that typically is almost like a mini IPO. But I tell you, John, I've been energized to just see what can be done in this area. At this point, we have a patent on prostate cancer. We've done clinical validation work for six other cancers, including pancreatic cancer. We already have detected pancreatic cancer at stage one, not in like thousands of samples, but in enough to make us confident that we feel like we can do this. And so we're throwing everything into this. I'm rapidly going to...

Essentially from purely having been involved in cancer as a volunteer for the American Cancer Society to also pouring all of my professional energy and experience and my biochemistry background into making this company a big success and changing the way that cancer is diagnosed around the world. Well, the dream is if this could do what you're hoping it could do, it could radically simplify cancer detection for millions of people.

because let's just even take pancreatic cancer. I had Maria Menounos on the show, and she was able to detect her pancreatic cancer, but it was only because she was given the chance to do a whole body scan, which most people don't have full access to. I remember when I was an executive at Lowe's, if you were a VP or above,

every year you had this opportunity to go get these body scans and it would catch potential cardiac events. I remember they wheeled an ambulance right up to the facility one day because one of the other executives was about ready to have a heart attack. But it caught cancer, it caught other diseases. But the insurance companies aren't paying for it and it's unaffordable for

95% of it. That's one of the key things. I mean, I come back for one second to the American Cancer Society. I talked about ending cancer as we know it, meaning it's not the scare that it used to be, but for everyone. Sadly, and we're not just talking the United States, but around the world, let's keep in mind there are 8 billion people living on this planet, only 320 or 330 million living in this country.

The whole rest of the world is out there. There are countries with more than a billion people that don't have cat scans and mris and so forth available, even for people that are relatively well-to-do. And so one of the things that attracted me to epi 1 as well is that it is not just people who are

potentially a completely new way of detecting cancer accurately and early but also to do it affordably. Our technology is so elegant and actually so simple that

it can be accessible to everyone. And we plan to actually, we're not ready to announce this yet, but we're actually planning partnerships around the world in a way that most sort of American little startups wouldn't be, but that's because of my background and the relationships that I have. But our goal is very much not to just have this be something that is available to the rich and famous. They can do it in

whole body MRI or CAT scan any chance they have, but make it available to people that can't even frankly afford regular screenings of what is currently available. And just so the audience has a little bit more technical basis for this, how do your tests work?

and what makes them more accurate than what's currently available? So, first of all, they work based on blood or other bodily fluids or tissue. So it's very much like a blood test or a tissue test. We're actually working on urine tests, urine-based tests as well as the bodily fluid.

Essentially, what happens is that signal that I talked about that is on the genome, I mean, that is in DNA, circulating in your blood and tissue, that signal is so strong that we can actually detect it using PCR, polymerase chain reaction. We all remember from COVID. You got a PCR test. Everybody got educated on PCR. It's something that you learn in high school biology class. You get those gels and you see how it travels. That's what some people are familiar with. It's a very inexpensive technology.

And so really what it comes down to is that there are what are called cancer biomarkers that are present in your blood. There are companies that are out there that are leveraging this, great companies that are leveraging this based on genomic sequencing. We are actually not doing it based on genomic sequencing because we found a signal that's so strong that we don't need to genomic sequencing. That's how we can keep the cost down very low. But it's basically, if you think about it, the way I explained it to some of my friends that are not scientists or geeks is that

when cancer is present and before a lot of people are very in tune with their bodies and they feel like something's wrong but I don't know what it is but at that stage like 0 to 0.5 if you will before it's a stage 1 cancer or something like that at the cellular level

cancer leaves behind fingerprints in the blood, if you will. That's one way to put it. And of course, if you don't know what to look for, you're never going to find those fingerprints. But if you know what to look for, they're there. And so I know it sounds too good to be true, but it's really that simple. We're using very standard laboratory. There's no...

black box medical device or something. I mean, we're using, people can watch us in the lab. We're being very secretive about exactly how we're doing, what is in each of the reagents, how are we doing it, but we're using standard lab equipment to do it. But it's really, it all comes back to cancer biomarkers that are present in all of our bodily fluids. Well, that's amazing, and I guess if you even found an early determinant,

It could lead to more extensive biomarking testing if someone wanted to go down that path. Absolutely. And also, I mean, it comes down to other things. And I remember this very much when my first wife was battling cancer. I remember the physician say, well, we're going to try this drug. I'm like, okay, tell me about this drug. They're like, well, it works in 39% of the patients. I'm like, which 39%?

And they were like, "We don't really know." I'm like, "Well, is it Northern European ancestry?" People are starting to talk about genetic basics of disease. And we're like, "No, we don't really know. The trials don't work that way. The trials are just, like, based on people with 50 kilograms of body weight." I'm like, "Well, there's a lot more to my wife than that." But the thing is that now with biomarkers, we actually can predict

drug response. So imagine if based on biomarkers, we could say that, well, your sister has a 99% chance of responding to this drug and a 0% chance of responding to that drug. Well, that's a lot better than experimenting on her, right? And oh my God, she feels horrible. We're going to stop. And so I guess a message I would want listeners to

hear a message of hope that there's so much that we're flooded with in the media with oh so-and-so found a cure for this or that and I think people just tune it out. There are good people that are doing research every day and if you could see into the laboratories around the world of young researchers that are bright that have studied their butts off

and that are smiling and saying, "I just discovered something." And it no longer is something that takes 20 years to get into the world because we're living in a much smaller sort of scientific community than many people realize. It should be very exciting to everyone. No, I mean, you're right, because with the pace of change, one thing that all that technology and all this research that you've been talking about, it is making these things come to market much quicker. And I'm sure if something like what you're proposing

could be done and they find that it's working on scale, it's gonna save so many millions of people that there's a huge need to bring it to the market quicker. - Yep. - So I'm gonna switch gears on you again, and there's another cancer connection here. So you have known President Joe Biden for

over two decades, if I understand it correctly. And as we see President Biden today, a lot of us don't see the backstory he has had in his own family with people who've had cancer, the most recent one being his son, Beau, who died most likely due to implications from his time in service that

drove him to have brain cancer. The president view the research and what's happening on cancer because I know it's deeply personal for him. It is deeply personal for him, and I would say that, yeah, Beau, while he was serving in Iraq and he served also in the Balkans, he spent a lot of time near burn pits, and I think you know what those can be like. Yeah, I've been around them myself, so... Yeah, and it's toxic smokes and fumes, and there's no way to prove it. Is that why he got glioblastoma, which is a vicious...

brain cancer, but certainly that's reasonable to assume or at least to hypothesize that's the case. The thing that I probably go to first, John, is that Joe Biden was vice president of the United States. I mean, you're the second most powerful person, let's say, in the American government. His son has this diagnosis. They obviously said, OK, where do we go? You try and find the best hospital. And they were talking to everybody from the folks in D.C. and Philadelphia.

And what rings in my ears a lot is hearing at the time how difficult it was. Here you're talking about the son of the vice president of the United States, how difficult it was to have his electronic medical records be looked at by physicians around from different hospitals. And they were literally like saying, well, can you fax this record from as, oh, well, we have a different electronic medical record system. So can you like, I mean, they were taking screenshots with their iPad.

and texting them down to D.C. and stuff like that. And that, I would say, I don't want to put words in now President Biden's mouth, but that drove him nuts. It drove him up the wall that we are in the most advanced country in the world and our medical system is so compartmentalized that it made it very difficult to even just share records to get opinions from different doctors. And it goes further. One of the things that the president's talked about a lot in this regard, and really it's from personal experience, is that

There's a lot of funding, federal funding, funding from the American Cancer Society and others, many other wonderful charities and foundations that fund this type of work that goes to researchers that then their main goal is to do their work and then to get it published. There's a saying we all know from academia, it's publish or perish.

And the thing is, what happens when you're working on an article, well, you don't really want to share. You don't want other people to know what's going on. Exactly. And so it's an understandable impulse, but it's one that actually slows down medical research. And so I think the president has been on a tear, to put it this way, for the better part of a decade. Bo passed away at the end of May of 2015. We're now here in 2024. He's been on a tear to try and make

cancer care and the whole medical community is more efficient, take down barriers, take down silos, have people collaborate more. It's not to say that they shouldn't be incentivized to publish and fulfill their grants and so forth, but just really think of it that we're all in this fight together. And a lot of people, I'm sure many of you listeners have heard about the Moonshot. The idea really was

set a goal and do something that seems outrageous, not just like go 5% further than you did last year, but let's really have a feeling of ownership and make this happen because we can. And I think the president often has talked about that America is if you had to sum it up in one word, it would be opportunities and possibilities. And again, maybe there I come back to my early experience of being in Berlin and we thought, oh, this wall will always be there. Well, next day it was gone. I mean, sometimes

things happen that quickly. And I think if we had all known, if you ask people afterwards, if you had known that was going to happen, would you have behaved differently? Well, maybe so, right? And I think when it comes to medical research now, if I think if the American public knew how close we are

to curing some of these cancers or finding them so early that they're easily cured, they'd be like, "Hell, let's double down on this," right? There would be an outcry. It's like, "All they need is another 10 billion on this or another billion. I know that's a lot of money and it has to come from somewhere." But I think that President Biden feels very

Like many of us, and he often say this, I mean, there's so many families that go through this. His isn't any different than anyone else. But there is a personal sense of mission that comes from the experience that he's gone through. And it's not just his son, Bo. I mean, there's others that he's been close to that have gone through this. And I mean, it's definitely something that's been very personal to him. And I mean, when you look at

A lot of the job of a president, obviously, is to bring in other people into your administration. He brought in very early, he brought in Dr. Monica Bertagnoli. She was on our board, on the American Cancer Society board, and he made her the director of the National Cancer Institute.

And then a year later made her the head of all of NIH, National Institutes of Health, which is the largest funder of all research in the world. And she's an amazing person. And so when you think about and you think about this in the military context, in the scientific context, in other contexts, I think being a leader in government or in business is all about selecting people, right? You can't do it all yourself. And as you all know, President Biden is now 81 years old. He has

He's selected some incredible people throughout his administration that have made a difference every day. And on cancer in particular, I wish more of us actually could see and appreciate all the work that's going on around the country that is coming. And rightly, in my opinion, I'm biased, but rightly, in my opinion, funded by America's resources and America's taxpayers.

Well, thank you for sharing that. And Michael, as we come to a close, where is the best place for people to learn more about you and what EpiOne is doing? Sure. Thank you, John. So, EpiOne, we're on the internet, epione.com with a hyphen in the middle, so epi-one.com. And I have a website for myself as well. That's just markhartglobal.com. You can feel free to connect with me online. I love connecting people and I love being connected.

So your last name, global.com. Yes. And are you on the social platforms as well? I'm on all the social platforms. Same at MarkRodGlobal and then Epi1 is on all the social platforms as well. Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. It was such an honor to have you on PassionStruck. Thank you.

What an incredible honor that was to interview my friend, Michael McCourt. And I wanted to thank Michael and EpiOne for the privilege and honor of having him appear on today's show. Links to all things Michael will be in the show notes. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we featured around the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please go subscribe and join over a quarter million other subscribers.

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