60 Minutes and Patient Number One

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pwilmarth
pwilmarth Member Posts: 235
edited May 2016 in Stage IV/Metastatic Breast Cancer ONLY

I don't how many of you watched the 60 minutes episode tonight. It followed the course of 5 patients who were being treated for a brain cancer with a radical new therapy using the polio virus at Duke University.

The gist of the story is: a doctor has learned how to alter the DNA of polio so that it invades only cancer cells. This makes the cancer cell susceptible to the immune system activating T-cells and killing cancer cells. They have only had a few patients in a Phase I clinical trial, but the results were so astonishing that the FDA has fast-tracked this treatment so it can be available to everyone with this type of cancer.

Patient Number One was a 20 year old woman who was in nursing school when she was diagnosed. Her prognosis was poor. She had all of the treatments she could for her cancer. There were no other options for her.

Today, her cancer is in remission (I don't think they are quite ready to use the word cured) and she's finished nursing school.

The second patient was a 74 year old retired cardiologist. His cancer is now gone.

There's still a lot that the oncologists involved with treatment are learning, but this treatment has the potential to be used on every type of cancer, including breast cancer (the researchers thought it would be available for clinical trials within 3-5 years).

Watching the journey for Patient Number One made me cry. It seems we are getting close to a "cure" for this disease using our own immune systems to fight the battle.

When this becomes available for us, how many of you want to be Patient Number One?

Patient Number One

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  • sueopp
    sueopp Member Posts: 1,541
    edited May 2016

    I truly believe thst once they figure out how to make the immunology-related therapies work, then cancer will indeed be cured. Just need to hang on until. ...SUE

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  • zarovka
    zarovka Member Posts: 3,607
    edited May 2016

    They can get viruses to selectively attack cancer. A Canadian version of this treatment is called reolysin. The company that is trying to develop it is Oncolytics Biotech. The outcomes of clinical trials for Reolysin so far are ambiguous. However, there is certainly a group of smart people, including my complementary doc, who think this is The Cure.

    Exciting to see how well it worked on people who need it the most. I am able to maintain my composure and have some normalcy with tumors in my breast, lymph nodes and liver. Not sure I could pull it off with a tumor in my brain.

    My blessing to those people benefiting from that treatment ...

    >Z<

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  • DivineMrsM
    DivineMrsM Member Posts: 9,620
    edited May 2016

    pwilmarth, I saw this and find it very exciting that this treatment is so promising. Science and medicine is quite amazing

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  • RonnieKay
    RonnieKay Member Posts: 2,067
    edited May 2016

    I DO, I DO!!!! We watched it too....and had seen the previous show on the virus at work. I met some of the researchers at Fred Hutch in Seattle, toured my onc's lab (65% of his time is spent there) & was excited by the very young scientists....who are working tirelessly to bring a cure about. I told them it needs to be sooner than soon...too many of us are slipping away. They were talking about how they share their findings, vice versa, with other cancer researchers, specifically mentioning Duke. My onc has been researching bc for 25 years (I thought he was early 40s) and said that at a large conference of C researchers, when a dr learned of his being a bc onc said, "You sure haven't done much in the line of keeping it under control." I expected him to say he quoted new therapies, etc, that showed yes, there has been lots of work done....but he said, the dr was right...losing 40,000 lives each year, for 30 years, is unacceptable. Shout it to the mountains!!!!

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  • exbrnxgrl
    exbrnxgrl Member Posts: 12,424
    edited May 2016

    I saw it (well, actually heard it on the radio audio cast ), and am very excited. Whether this is the cure or not, is still unclear to me, but I think this is moving in the right direction

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  • Beatmon
    Beatmon Member Posts: 1,562
    edited May 2016

    I think it did give us hope, whether or not it will be for us, but hopefully for those who follow if not. Please let the suffering end.

    Brenda E

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