Killing cancer with a breakthrough therapy | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

the long war on cancer has left us well short of Victory radiation flashed on in the 19th century chemotherapy began to drip in the 20th but for so many 100 Years of research adds up to just a few more months of life well tonight you're about to see a discovery for the 21st century that may be a big Leap Forward Awakening the power of the body's immune system for 10 months we've been inside an experimental therapy at Duke University some of the patients there use words that doctors don't use like miracle and cure and that's remarkable because these patients were handed a death sentence a Relentless brain cancer called glioblastoma to beat it researchers are doing something that many thought was crazy they're infecting the tumors with polio the virus that has crippled and killed for centuries in just a moment polio will be dripped into the brain of 58 year old Nancy Justice her glioblastoma tumor was discovered in 2012. surgery chemotherapy and radiation bought her two and a half years but the tumor came roaring back now the virus in this syringe which mankind has fought to eradicate from the Earth is the last chance she has in the world you might feel a little tugged depending on in October this past year half a teaspoon of polio flowed into her tumor okay ready to go are you ready ready Bring It On we're starting 9 21 I will definitely perfect well let me ask do you feel anything no so far so good don't feel a thing her husband Greg constantly inflates a buoyant optimism to save him from the weight of the unknown glioblastoma was diagnosed in the 21st year of the Georgia couple's marriage just as they could make out the finish line for Zach and Luke at College her tumor can double in size every two weeks and when glioblastoma returns time is short doctors gave her seven months but good ones maybe just three or four the tumor was aggressive so you wanted an aggressive treatment yes yes you're a a medical Explorer does it feel that way to you I've taken it one day at a time sounds very lofty to say medical Explorer but you know throughout all of this if this gives other people hope I'm all for it Greg you mentioned that Nancy was there for every important event in the boys lives but there are a lot of important events to come exactly what do you hope to see so I am going to see those boys walk across the stage at their college graduation I am going to see him get married and I am going to see your grandkids preferably in that order and I know it's like such a mom bucket list but I'll love every minute of it it was the day before that we saw Nancy proceeded by her Shield the smile that she rarely lets slip Nancy was Wheeling into an intricate surgery to insert a path for the virus that white mass is the tumor back of her skull near the top Duke's chief of neurosurgery Dr John Sampson used 3D MRIs to plot his course he tacked between the lime green strands that connect to every vital function in her body and he brought the catheter to the center of the lethal Mass it's just like a sniper's bullet if it doesn't go to the right place it's not going to hit the target and it's not only important to get it to the right place but also to make sure that it doesn't go to the wrong places doesn't cause any harm to the patient it doesn't travel throughout the brain it won't travel too far throughout the brain because it's a relatively big molecule and the brain's a tight space so it's limited in how far it can travel at least that's what they expected as Nancy became the 17th patient in the experiment the polio infusion was slow that half a teaspoon took six and a half hours but that's it one dose and she's done no more surgery chemo radiation nothing if this works you're doing fantastic all right now show me your smile on since his way home that same day oncologist Dr anit Desjardins showed her how it went so we can exactly see where the polio virus went so that's the MRI uni looked at on Monday then you see here the brighter area there you can you can you see that yes that's the polio virus wow exactly where we needed it oh cool right where it should be in a few months they'll take another MRI to see which is stronger glioblastoma or polio the number of calls are increasing this is Duke's polio team as usual in such studies several of them have a financial stake so they'll benefit too if it becomes commercial can you pick out the deputy director of the brain tumor Center well when you're one of the world's leading cancer doctors turns out you can wear what you like and after 34 years Folks at Duke are used to how Dr Henry Friedman's brain views fashion really good to see that this is going well it was Friedman who encouraged Nancy Justice to gamble on the polio experiment I wonder of all the trials and all of the theories and all of the treatments that you have hoped for all of these years how does this stack up this to me is the most promising therapy I've seen in my career period a turning point in Cancer Care I hope so I think it may well be why would he say that during an early clinical trial with barely enough patients to fill an elevator because of the Decades of work that have led to this moment the virus is the creation of the obsession of Dr Matthias grohmeyer a molecular biologist who's been laboring over this therapy 25 years the last 15 at Duke when you went to your colleagues and said I've got it we'll use the polio virus to kill cancer what did they say well I got a range of responses from from crazy to to uh you're lying to all kinds of things most people thought it just was too dangerous I thought he was nuts I mean I really thought that what he's using is a weapon that produces paralysis other researchers are experimenting with cancer treatments using viruses including HIV smallpox and measles but polio was Dr grohlmeier's choice because as luck would have it it seeks out and attaches to a receptor that is found on the surface of the cells that make up nearly every kind of solid tumor it's almost as if polio had evolved for the purpose re-engineered the polio virus by removing a key genetic sequence the virus can't survive this way so he repaired the damage with a harmless bit of cold virus this new modified virus can't cause paralysis or or death because it can't reproduce in normal cells but in cancer cells it does and in the process of replicating it releases toxins that poison the cell Duke went to the FDA for approval of this new Frankenstein virus they were afraid you might create a monster they were afraid we might create something which could infect the general Community I mean look at me I'm a scientist I'm a physician and I said this is nuts I think that their reaction was uh was appropriate to satisfy the FDA they did seven years of safety studies tests on 39 monkeys prove they didn't get polio and in 2011 the FDA approved a trial in humans someone had to go first it's a hell of a thing to be told that you have months to live when you're 20 years old in 2011 Stephanie Lipscomb was a nursing student with headaches a doctor came in to say that she had this glioblastoma tumor the size of a tennis ball I looked at the nurse that was sitting there holding my hand and um I said I don't understand like what did he just say um it's kind of hard for me to process you had 98 of the tumor removed exactly as much radiation as you can have in a lifetime and chemotherapy exactly and then in 2012 what did the doctors tell you your cancer is back with recurrent glioblastoma there were no options except the one that had never been tried before did they tell you that it had never been tried in a human being before they did the same time nothing to lose honestly I wonder what your mother said she looked at Dr desert and she said you want to do what with my daughter you want to do what and I'm like let's do it come on let's go I have the sense that this scared you a lot more than you've let on it did I knew how scared my family was and I didn't want it them to see me scared but of course you were the point of fact we didn't know what the polio was going to do we thought the poliovirus might help or we had no idea what it would do in the long haul it was a crapshoot it's roll the dice and hope that you're going to get an answer that is coming up sevens and not coming up Snake Eyes but in the months that followed it looked like a Bad Bet so we treated air in the May then in July the tumor looked bigger look really insane I got really concerned got really worried you thought this wasn't working I thought it wasn't working Dr Desjardins wanted to go back to traditional treatment maybe another surgery but Stephanie decided against her advice to wait by October five months after her infusion an MRI showed that the tumor hadn't been growing at all it turned out it only looked worse because it was inflamed Stephanie's immune system had awakened to the cancer and gone to war why didn't the immune system react to the cancer to begin with so cancers all human cancers they develop a shield a shroud of protective measures that make them invisible to the immune system and this is precisely what we try to reverse with our virus so by infecting the tumor we are actually removing this protective shield and telling them enabling the immune system to come in and attack so essentially What's Happening Here inside the tumor is you have a polio infection yes and that sets off an alarm yes for the immune system yes the immune system says there's a polio infection we better go kill it exactly and it turns out it's the tumor yes it appears the polio starts the killing but it's the immune system that does most of the damage Stephanie's tumor shrank for 21 months until it was gone this is an MRI from this past August three years after the infusion something unimaginable has happened for a patient with recurrent glioblastoma and there's no cancer in this picture we don't see any cancer active against our cells indigenous tumor at all she is cancer free the only thing that remains is this whole which is an artifact of an early surgery under traditional standard of care treatment Stephanie should not be standing here next to us today absolutely no Stephanie when they showed this to you what did you think I'm surprised because you never expect on a phase one study in particular which is what she is on to have these kind of results you're not expecting to cure people in a phase one trial you're not even necessarily expecting to help them you hope so but that's not the design of a phase one study it's designed to get the right dose when you get anything on top of that it's cake quite a cake quite a cake biggest cake we've seen in a long long time tell me what you see there Dr Fritz Anderson showed us the results in another patient himself he's a retired cardiologist and at age 70 he became the second person in the polio trials this is a fairly sizable temporal tumor which means that we see right here on the left is his tumor before treatment on the right a hairline SCAR Where it used to be like Stephanie that was nearly three years ago when they said that this thing is just a small Scar and we think it's possibly cured and he fell off my chair I said that's that's that's that's impossible they said well we don't know but so far it looks fantastic do you consider yourself cured or do you call it remission I feed it as a cure and I live my life that way Fritz and Stephanie met for the first time here at 60 minutes when we interviewed them last fall there you go well let's do left right to left with the early success the team raised the dose in the next few patients in Hope of an even better result but that's when the polio trial encountered its first tragedies when we come back we'll look at how the virus is working in Nancy Justice who we met in the beginning and at what they've discovered after trying polio against lung cancer breast cancer and many others yeah for nearly a year we've been following the clinical trial at Duke University where the polio virus is being used to kill a vicious brain cancer called glioblastoma the goal of the experiment was to discover the right dose of the virus the first two patients saw their tumors melt away so with that remarkable result at small doses the researchers increased the potency of the virus in the next patients that's how they made a tragic but vital discovery about the power of immunotherapy in killing cancer maybe just close one eyes it's been three years since Stephanie Lipscomb became the first patient to see her recurrent glioblastoma wiped out by polio problem with memory no vision no she gets a checkup at Duke every four months [Music] Liberty to the to the patients starting the polio trial 60-year-old Donna Clegg a social worker from Idaho will be patient number 14. we're gonna do it was Donna Clegg before cancer and this is how we found her last June puffy from the steroids they'd used to limit the swelling in her brain like others in the trial she'd had surgery chemo and radiation but the glioblastoma came back and the poliovirus was her last chance I want to be able to live so that's kind of how I feel that this is going to be my opportunity to to have a full life Donna's polio infusion was three times more potent than the one that worked for Stephanie and that's the whole idea behind this phase one trial to increase the dose in succeeding patients step by step in search of the best result Dr Henry Friedman is deputy director of Duke's brain tumor Center we believe in the philosophy we've learned in chemotherapy that more is better so if we were getting a good response at dose level 1 or dose level two then go to dose level three four five in Donna Clegg doctors saw the expected inflammation as her immune system attacked the tumor but the higher dose caused an immune response that was much too powerful the inflammation put so much pressure on her brain she became partially paralyzed back home in Idaho she decided it was all too much and dropped out of the polio trial I thought this was the miracle her husband recorded this in a nursing home when you're told you either take this chance or die what would you do you had to do over again what would you do I may not have done it Donna Clegg died three weeks ago because she left the trial doctors at Duke can only theorize that it was a combination of the advanced state of her disease and the Ferocious immune response that ended her life Donna Clegg suffered quite a lot and I wonder how that weighs on your mind every patient who has an outcome that is not positive weighs on my mind I think that when you're doing a phase one study you know that these things can happen and I don't think that we helped her quality of life we've learned something and I don't know that the family will take heart and the fact they're part of a legacy of passing the torch to more patients that follow I hope that that means something to them but she is a patient who really did not derive benefit and yet taught us something important you discovered that putting in too much poliovirus created too large an immune response absolutely and that was the turning point in the daring polio trial what was learned from Donna clegg's death may give life to Nancy Justice neuro-oncologist Dr anik Desjardins cut the potency of Nancy's infusion by 85 percent it was a lower dose than they had ever intended to use in the study even so Dr Desjardin expected a big immune response in the next four to six months we should see the inflammations of the immune system waking up starting to kill the tumor you will expect to see her MRI look worse in the early days absolutely before it gets better absolutely it certainly did after she returned to Georgia Nancy's symptoms started to resemble Donna cleggs she had trouble with words her right side was weak her husband Greg took her back to Duke for an emergency MRI this was Nancy's tumor before the polio infusion three months later the site had doubled in size the swelling had pushed one hemisphere of her brain into the other avastin 500 milligrams Dr Desjardins ordered a small dose of a cancer drug called avastin not to treat the tumor but to reduce the swelling Nancy's symptoms improved right away and two weeks ago Nancy had a new MRI it was four and a half months since her polio infusion and we joined her husband and Sons to see the new image for the first time and you haven't had a chance to see it yet so show us doctor what you have size every 2-3 weeks so the fact that we don't see the tumor growing back we don't see the swelling coming back we don't see Nancy getting worse all of that is very positive it's a sign that the polio virus is doing its job on the left is the inflammation that we saw earlier on the right is the new MRI her tumor has a gaping hole it's being wrecked from the inside out so where does this go from here so now we keep following her and hopefully keeps shrinking and it keeps collapsing and that's what we have seen with Fritz and Stephanie that it continued shrinking for years and actually when you look at this what do you think uh it's amazing oh my gosh I mean thank you Lord and these doctors you know and to just see this um you know that's that's life I mean it's just it's hard to not just start crying so far there have been 22 patients in the polio trial 11 died most of them had the higher dose but even so they lived months longer than expected the other 11 continue to improve four are past six months which Duke calls remission we clearly are producing a very very significant benefit we've got an increase in median survival of over six months which is huge and glioblastoma six months doesn't sound like that because it doesn't sound like much but that's that's just the midpoint so we've got patients that are out as far as 33 34 months that is just unheard of in this disease Dr Daryl bigner is the head of the study and of Duke's brain tumor Center he's been fighting brain cancer 50 years and he told us he has never seen results like those in patients Fritz Anderson and Stephanie Lipscomb based on what you have seen is it fair to say that Stephanie and Fritz are in remission oh absolutely that's probably a very good term to use they're in remission and I think they would tell you that they consider themselves normal again cured you know I'm very reluctant to use the Cure word the c word as we call it because we don't know how long it takes to say that a glioblastoma has been cured but I am beginning to think about it close your eyes for me for me for the major ity but what they've achieved in this rare form of cancer may be just the beginning molecular biologist Matthias grommire the creator of the virus is pressing ahead you have been testing this therapy against a number of other cancers just in a laboratory dish what have you been able to kill so far so we have done this for lung cancers breast cancers colorectal cancers prostate cancers pancreatic cancers liver cancers renal cancers we probably see this in just about any type of cancer can imagine the man who's overseeing the polio trial for the FDA is Dr Peter marks a deputy director responsible for hundreds of other experimental treatments for cancer you have to wonder if it's too good to be true some of the results in these early trials appear nearly miraculous we hope they really are miraculous but we do have to be cautious because sometimes people just get lucky and the first patients they treat with a therapy respond very well but subsequently additional patients don't help me put immunotherapy in perspective here how big in advance is this in terms of viruses to treat cancer so the field of immunotherapy is is tremendously exciting it's been a paradigm shift in how we go about treating cancer because there are real products out there that our immunotherapies that are actually helping people to live longer so we all know about surgery chemotherapy and radiation but now this is a fourth weapon yes already 10 drugs that trigger the immune system have been approved and they are significantly extending the lives of patients with Cancers including lung cancer and melanoma according to the rules of the FDA Dr Marx could not speak to us specifically about the polio trial but in about a year the FDA is expected to make a decision about whether to Grant Duke what's called breakthrough status which would make the polio Treatment available to many more patients much sooner glioblastoma kills 12 000 Americans a year Fritz Anderson expected to be one of them before he became the second patient in the Duke trial he wrote his own obituary he'll have to update it three years later he's cancer-free Lipscomb Stephanie Lipscomb wasn't supposed to see her 22nd birthday how are you doing three years later she's graduated from nursing school do you think being a cancer survivor is going to make you a better nurse oh yeah it already has and so I know I would have I loved it when nurses held my hand so I like to be there and be there emotionally for him too and as Nancy Justice's tumor continues to shrink it's no leaving room for her imagination to grow Nancy months ago when I met you for the first time they were dripping the polio virus into your tumor and you told me about some of the things that you were determined to see in the lives of these boys exactly I wonder if you're at a place now where you can start making plans oh definitely I mean that has that's been what's keep kept me going I will see them graduate college I will see them get married and I will have grandchildren in that order a bold experiment to kill a vicious cancer has one breakthrough status from the Food and Drug Administration early tests at Duke University have been so successful the FDA will Fast Track this treatment to hundreds of patients while it's still being evaluated for final approval the therapy is audacious it uses the polio virus to attack a virulent brain cancer called glioblastoma which is a death sentence of astonishing speed that leaves patients with only months to live for two years we've been following Volunteers in the Duke clinical trial we have witnessed nearly miraculous recoveries and unexpected defeats on a journey of Discovery beyond the known frontiers of science Nancy Justice had been sentenced to oblique prognosis when we met her in October 2014 at age 58 she had recurrent glioblastoma it had come back after surgery radiation and chemotherapy typically she could expect to live seven months the poliovirus which mankind had fought to eradicate from the Earth was the last chance she had in the world you might feel just a tiny tug there a half teaspoon of polio flowed through a catheter inserted through Nancy's skull directly into her tumor okay ready to go are you ready ready bring it on we're starting 9 21. if you feel anything you let us know I will definitely her husband Greg constantly inflated a buoyant optimism to save him from the weight of the unknown okay her glioblastoma was diagnosed in the 21st year of Nancy and Greg's marriage just as the Georgia couple could make out the finish line for Zach and Luke at College her tumor can double in size every two weeks the tumor was aggressive so you wanted an aggressive treatment yes yes you're a a medical Explorer does it feel that way to you I've taken it one day at a time it sounds very lofty to say medical Explorer but you know throughout all of this if this gives other people hope I'm all for it Greg you mentioned that Nancy was there for every important event in the boys lives but there are a lot of important events to come exactly what do you hope to see so I am going to see those boys walk across the stage at their college graduation I am going to see him get married and I am going to see your grandkids preferably in that order and I know it's like such a mom bucket list but I'll love every minute of it the number of calls are increasing again this is Duke's polio team Dr Daryl bigner director of the Tisch brain tumor Center molecular biologist Matthias grommire and neuro oncologist Dr Henry Friedman and Dr anik Desjardins as is typical the university has licensed this technology to a new company to attract research dollars to the therapy and all the members of the team are investors good to see that this is going well Dr Friedman screens more than 1 000 glioblastoma patients a year who would like to be treated at Duke he helps decide who meets the criteria for the polio trial I wonder of all the trials and all of the theories and all of the treatments that you have hoped for all of these years how does this stack up this to me is the most promising therapy I've seen in my career period the virus is the creation of the obsession of Dr grohmeyer Who has been laboring over this for more than 25 years the last 15 at Duke when you went to your colleagues and said I've got it we'll use the polio virus to kill cancer what did they say well I got a range of responses from from crazy to to uh you're lying to all kinds of things most of us thought it just was too dangerous I thought he was nuts I mean I really thought that what he's using is a weapon that produces paralysis other researchers are experimenting with cancer treatments using viruses including HIV smallpox and measles but polio was Dr grohmeyer's choice because as luck would have it it seeks out and attaches to a receptor that is found on the surface of the cells that make up nearly every kind of solid tomb tumor it's almost as if polio had evolved for the purpose here is the genetic material Meyer re-engineered the virus removing a key genetic sequence the virus can't survive this way so he repaired the damage with a harmless bit of cold virus this new modified poliovirus can't cause paralysis or death because it can't reproduce in normal cells but in cancer cells it does and in the process of replicating it releases toxins that poison the cell at least that's what they'd observed in the laboratory eventually they had to try it in a human being it's a hell of a thing to be told that you have months to live when you're 20 years old in 2011 Stephanie Lipscomb was a nursing student with headaches a doctor told her she had this glioblastoma tumor the size of a tennis ball I looked at the nurse that was sitting there holding my hand and um I said I don't understand like what did he just say it's kind of hard for me to process you had 98 of the tumor removed exactly as much radiation as you can have in a lifetime and chemotherapy exactly and then in 2012 what did the doctors tell you your cancer is back with recurrent glioblastoma there were no options except the one that had never been tried did they tell you that it had never been tried in a human being before they did but at the same time I had nothing to lose honestly her polio treatment began in 2012 and from the very beginning it looked like a Bad Bet so we treated air in the May then in July the tumor looked bigger look really inflamed I got really concerned got really worried you thought this wasn't working I thought it wasn't working neuro-oncologist anik Desjardins wanted to abandon the polio experiment and return to traditional treatment but Stephanie said no five months after her infusion an MRI showed the tumor only looked worse because of inflammation caused by Stephanie's immune system which had awakened to the cancer for the first time and gone to war why didn't the immune system react to the cancer to begin with so cancers all human cancers they develop a shield a shroud of protective measures that make them invisible to the immune system and this is precisely what we try to reverse with our virus so by infecting the tumor we are actually removing this protective shield and telling them enabling the immune system to come in and attack so essentially What's Happening Here inside the tumor is you have a polio infection yes and that sets off an alarm yes for the immune system yes the immune system says there's a polio infection we better go kill it exactly and it turns out it's the tumor yes it appears the polio starts the killing but the immune system does most of the damage Stephanie's tumor shrank for 21 months until it was gone three years after the infusion something unimaginable had happened this is from an MRI in August 2014. and there's no cancer in this picture at all we don't see any cancer active against ourselves she is cancer free All That Remains is this whole from an early surgery how surprised are you by that I'm surprised because you never expect on a phase one study in particular to have these kind of results you're not expecting to cure people in a phase one trial you're not even necessarily expecting to help them you hope so but that's not the design of a phase one study it's designed to get the right dose when you get anything on top of that it's cake quite a cake quite a cake biggest cake we've seen in a long long time Dr Fritz Anderson showed us the results in another patient himself he's a retired cardiologist and at age 70 he became the second person in the polio trial this is a fairly sizable temporal tumor which means that we see right here on the left is his tumor before treatment on the right a hairline SCAR Where it used to be that was nearly three years ago do you consider yourself cured or do you call it remission I feed it as a cure and I I live my life that way after the early successes the next patients would receive a higher dose that's the whole idea behind a phase one trial to increase the dose in succeeding patients step by step in search of the highest dose that is still safe we believe in the philosophy we've learned in chemotherapy that more is better so if we were getting a good response at dose level one or dose level two then go to dose level three four five sixty-year-old Donna Clegg was a social worker from Idaho we met her in 2014 puffy from the steroids used to reduce the swelling in her brain I want to be able to live so that's kind of how I feel that this is going to be my opportunity to to have a full life Donna's polio infusion was three times more potent than the one that had worked for Stephanie but in her case this higher dose set off an immune response that was much too powerful Donna battled the inflammation for nine months before she died in March 2015. Donna Clegg suffered quite a lot and I wonder how that weighs on your mind every patient who has an outcome that is not positive ways on my mind I think that when you're doing a phase one study you know that these things can happen but she is a patient who really did not derive benefit and yet taught us something important you discovered that putting in too much poliovirus created too large an immune response absolutely after that hard lesson doctors cut the potency of Nancy Justice's dose by 85 percent it was less than they had ever expected to use they called this new dose dose minus one but even so four and a half months after her infusion in March 2015 inflammation had caused the mass in Nancy's brain to double in size but to Dr Desjardins the tumor looked weaker and in this image it's shot through full of holes it's shut through flows and let me show you the next picture in your seats even wow more and more holes so where does this go from here so now we keep following her and hopefully keeps shrinking and it keeps collapsing and that's what we have seen with Fritz and Stephanie that it continued shrinking for years and actually when you look at this what do you think oh it's amazing oh my gosh I mean thank you Lord and these doctors thank you doctors you know and to just see this um you know that's that's life Nancy Justice faces a hard road ahead but along the way new discoveries will take the researchers in a Direction they never imagined 38 patients have volunteered for Duke University's experiment to use the polio virus to kill glioblastoma the most efficient Relentless cancer of the brain the fda's decision to Grant Duke breakthrough status means the second phase of the trial will be expanded to about 40 institutions with hundreds of patients if that goes well Duke will be allowed to skip the third phase of the trial and make polio therapy for glioblastoma available to all the route to this achievement was not a straight line the first volunteers saw their tumors disappear but later patients suffered crippling setbacks there was a way forward but researchers found themselves on a path they had not imagined their guide through the mystery was a patient named Brendan Steele Riley and Connor for Mom and Dad on Christmas Eve 2009 Brendan Steele could not know how precious the gift of life would be at 37 he was an I.T manager in Montana a husband and father of three but then doctors found glioblastoma and gave him 11 months to say goodbye when surgery radiation and chemotherapy failed Brendan volunteered for Duke's polio trial and in 2013 he received the six-hour polio virus infusion but in removing the catheter a blood vessel was severed his wife Kathy was by his side Brennan said it's weird and he goes hold his head and weird just kind of pulp drained out like that was the end of his speech you understood how bad off you were no no no because um I don't remember emergency surgery stopped the bleeding but the trauma left brynden barely able to walk or talk seven months later a biopsy revealed that his tumor was growing doctors gave Brendan chemotherapy it had failed him before but it might give him just a few more weeks neuro-oncologist Anita Desjardins did not imagine what happened next we gave him one dose of chemotherapy and the lesion just melted went away rapidly which we don't see that happen normally two months after that single dose of chemo the tumor the white Mass on the Right started to break up Brendan continued the chemotherapy and in eight months it was gone and what do the doctors tell you about your cancer today no cancer no cancer recurrent glioblastoma and now they tell you they cannot find it in your brain yep Brendan Steele has lived 35 months since his polio infusion he's been cancer free for 19. Dr Henry Friedman deputy director of Duke's Cancer Center has a theory about why the chemo worked this time when it never had before shockingly chemotherapy in patients who have previously failed it once they've had the poliovirus therapy now seem to have a new enhanced almost extraordinary response to the chemotherapy as if the poliovirus has set up the tumor to be more responsive to chemotherapy that was a surprise that was a surprise and for us to see this it was a stunning observation that is actually the platform for a future study that will involve chemotherapy and the poliovirus the discovery changed their approach to Nancy Justice you'll remember when we last Saw Nancy in March 2015. Dr Desjardins saw signs her tumor was breaking up but in the months that followed the inflammation kept growing as Nancy's brain compressed she was losing the connections to her arm her legs and her relationship to the very space around her and then touch your nose whatever part of the brain involves the will to fight appeared to be unaffected now would a single dose of chemotherapy have the same miraculous result as it did for brynden Steele Dr Desjardins reached for their new discovery and within two months the mass was shrinking saw the folds of the brain are back when they went reopening look at that Hallelujah now that's what we're looking for honey how did you feel at that time oh loved it loved I mean that's what we'd been working for praying for tumors getting smaller and smaller somebody had taken a racer to it as the inflammation retreated there was new space for Hope up elbow straight elbow straight look at the speed honey Nancy found strength yes and buoyed Always by her husband Greg she walked up to a mile a day Nancy's life was covering a distance of time denied to glioblastoma patients but last February 15 months after her infusion of polio her run met another hurdle just a little more her journey began she told us she would see her son's graduate be married and have children in that order she joked now determination was nuanced with gratitude for what she'd had already Nancy when we met you the first time I asked you about your mom bucket list how are those weddings and grandkids looking to you now okay so right now I'm thinking it's just a simple things right now that I enjoy seven weeks after that interview in late March Nancy was rushed back to Duke the light that never dimmed was in her eyes but her words were gone this is what she was fighting the inflammation engulfed half her brain I just think we need to know what we're dealing with so we can move neurosurgeon Alan Friedman needed to find out if the mass was a buildup of dead cells from the immune response or active cancer he slipped a needle into her brain to extract a bit of tissue thank you see you there in a second the tissue was rushed to the Pathology Lab where a microscope discovered dead cells where the polio was working but also regrowth of the tumor glioblastoma had found a way back 18 months after we first met Nancy doctors Alan Friedman and annique Desjardin explained to Greg that Nancy's tumor had now infiltrated parts of her brain responsible for breathing and cognition she's getting worse and maybe it's the time where we cannot do anything anymore to help her and we need to let her go and we love you you know that's right we wondered whether Greg would do it all again definitely we would do it Nancy would have been gone long ago and uh I think it's it's given us some good time and we appreciate that on April 6th Nancy Justice medical Explorer passed away at the age of 60. she'd had nine more months than she could have expected what did Nancy teach you from the treatment standpoint what she taught us is two different things so clearly the combination of the polio virus with the chemotherapy added at first an amazing response we need to understand that the next thing is at some point though it stopped working and why did that happen what the Duke team has learned is that inflammation is an unavoidable consequence of the immune system's attack in most patients and that managing it with drugs will likely be a key to survival so far there have been 21 patients at this lowest dose minus one yes eight of them have died yes put that in perspective for me all the ones who haven't died on a phase one trial is simply remarkable it's a c positive results in terms of controlling a tumor or shrinking a tumor in patients with recurrent disease on a phase one trial is remarkable it's not your goal it's not your expectation but it certainly is something that when you see it you say this is really terrific this is special apparently the FDA saw something special too breakthrough status was granted after data showed that patients who'd been living an average of 10 months were living an average of 15 months and three patients showed no sign of Cancer at all after three years Dr Daryl bigner who runs Duke's brain tumor Center has fought glioblastoma for 50 years when you talk of median survival being extended from 10 months to 15 months for some of these patients it's 15 months and Counting yes they're still living yes yes and we still have got uh significant periods of high quality survival and that is a huge difference and then we have our patients like uh Stephanie Fritz and Brandon that are leading virtually normal lives uh I mean they probably go many days without even thinking about having had a glioblastoma which is just amazing you were in medical school thinking about one day being able to beat glioblastoma and now you are standing on this doorstep what does that mean to you personally it's an enormous feeling and I I have to be very careful I never want to give anyone false hope but I I see all of the science coming together now and I know it's going to happen I've never felt that way until now and in an amazing new development this science may be coming together for an entire range of cancers in the laboratory Duke has used polio to kill cancer cells of the skin pancreas stomach lung colon and prostate immunologist Dr Smita Nair showed us what polio did to breast cancer in mice this is breast cancer tissue and what we find is if you look at this is here is a tumor that got injected with poliovirus here is a tumor that got injected with just saline and the difference in the tumor size is extremely visible here night and day we kept seeing this so we went back and asked the question what is happening in the tumors and we tease these tumors apart and what we found were a lot of T cells in the tumor immune system cells immune system cells Dr nyer has filmed immune system T cells shown here in color breaking apart a tumor cell what you see took a little over one hour this leads Dr Nair and others to a fascinating possibility once immune cells are programmed to recognize a cancer will they remember and attack that cancer everywhere in the body for a lifetime if you get a tumor again these are memory T cells they will remember that and they can eliminate a recurrent or a metastatic tumor how long does it take typically to get from this mouth stage into a human trial I would say anything between three to five years it takes some time we'll go back to work and stop talking that's what I will do that's what I think I should do I remember two months ago you couldn't lift that heel there is much left to learn why do some patients suffer and die while others given months to live appear to have a complete recovery three years after his polio treatment Brendan Steele remains cancer free and he's determined to overcome the damage from his surgery a conviction that he keeps within arm's length it's not whether you get knocked down it's whether you get up great words to live by yeah yeah I remind myself every day get up get up four years after his polio therapy 73 year old Fritz Anderson is traveling the world with his wife I'm alive because of it if I hadn't received it I don't think I would be here today and Stephanie Lipscomb patient number one in the clinical trial four years ago has now become a nurse do you remember me coming in this morning yes I did yes you told us before that being a cancer patient would probably make you a better nurse and I Wonder has it oh yes to talk to my patients and tell them like I've been I've been in the hospital I've been sick like this it I can just see the Hope in their eyes where do you want to take your nursing career pediatric oncology kids with cancer yes sir because I was 20 when I was diagnosed I wasn't really completely adult and I absolutely love kids with this unique experience of surviving stage four cancer in my brain if I don't do this then it's kind of like a waste a waste of being cancer free you think you survive for a reason Oh yes most definitely

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 2,041,018

Keywords: cancer

Id: FEA6BQARqE8

Length: 54min 43sec (3283 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 18 2023