Shiftheads - When Your Kid Gets Cancer and Medicine Has No Answers: So You Build It Yourself

Adam Sorenson beat stage 4 brain cancer at 13 using an extreme ketogenic diet and metabolic approach. He stayed in remission for 10 years, unheard of for glioblastoma multiforme, the same cancer that killed Gord Downie and Neil Peart. When it came back in his brainstem and spine in 2024, doctors gave him two months. His father had been preparing for this moment for a decade.

Brad Sorenson founded Providence Therapeutics knowing his son's cancer would eventually return. The company makes immunotherapy vaccines tailored to each patient's specific tumor mutations. They sequence healthy tissue, compare it to the cancer, identify every difference, and create a vaccine that teaches the immune system exactly what to hunt. For Adam, it worked until the cancer evolved to evade it. So they got another biopsy, updated the vaccine, and treated him again. He's now well enough to be back in school, defying a death sentence with medicine designed specifically for his body.

Brad explains why immunotherapy trains the immune system instead of directly killing cancer, how they've treated about a dozen compassionate cases across multiple cancer types, and why their first clinical trial is happening in Australia for kids with terminal brain cancers. The funding reality is stark: Australia fully sponsors the trial and gets cost-access for all pediatric patients in perpetuity. Canada has the collaborations and research institutions but lacks the funding mechanism to make it happen at scale.

GUEST: Brad Sorenson | http://providencetherapeutics.com

Originally aired on 2026-01-06

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