WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.661 --> 00:00:07.869
It's the diagnosis no one wants to hear, but each year another 14 million people worldwide will be told they have cancer.

2
00:00:08.506 --> 00:00:12.168
In the fight against this disease, our greatest weapon may lie within,

3
00:00:12.629 --> 00:00:16.232
in the system already designed to fight for our bodies and our health.

4
00:00:16.870 --> 00:00:23.346
Maureen was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in January, 2009. It had spread to her adrenal glands and liver.

5
00:00:23.954 --> 00:00:26.992
It was inoperable, so she needed other options.

6
00:00:27.610 --> 00:00:34.194
Maureen started chemotherapy treatments. The first round didn't work, and neither did the second or the third.

7
00:00:34.485 --> 00:00:39.360
Maureen's options were running out. Her disease wasn't responding to the chemo.

8
00:00:39.792 --> 00:00:50.009
Maureen had metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the lung with disease in her liver, in her adrenal. She had a heart metastasis.

9
00:00:50.158 --> 00:00:55.634
She had just diffuse disease, and at that point her prognosis was on the order of a few months.

10
00:00:56.131 --> 00:00:59.983
We decided it really wasn't working and I asked him if he had anything else.

11
00:01:00.547 --> 00:01:09.530
And I must have been at [in] the right place at the right time, because he had said he had two trials coming up, and one of them was immunotherapy.

12
00:01:10.324 --> 00:01:14.714
Immunotherapy uses parts of the body's own immune system to fight the cancer.

13
00:01:15.163 --> 00:01:19.962
There are a few different types of immunotherapy, including vaccines and boosters for the immune system.

14
00:01:20.845 --> 00:01:25.889
The trial at Yale uses lab-made antibodies, which target specific molecules.

15
00:01:26.352 --> 00:01:27.337
Here's how it works.

16
00:01:27.743 --> 00:01:33.321
The T-cells of the immune system help fight for our bodies, eliminating germs and preventing disease,

17
00:01:33.814 --> 00:01:39.480
but cancer cells, which start as normal cells in the body before mutating, evade the immune system.

18
00:01:39.783 --> 00:01:47.712
Specific molecules form a barrier around the cancer cells, sending out a signal that convinces the T-cells there's nothing abnormal.

19
00:01:48.413 --> 00:01:54.019
By blocking these molecules, the cancer is then exposed, and the T-cells can do their job.

20
00:01:54.619 --> 00:01:59.303
In a lab at Yale Cancer Center, Dr. Lieping Chen meets with his researchers.

21
00:01:59.861 --> 00:02:02.745
In the battle against cancer, this is the front line.

22
00:02:03.226 --> 00:02:10.012
He's the man who discovered PD-L1. That's one of the protein molecules that help shield cancer from the immune system.

23
00:02:10.627 --> 00:02:15.539
For well over a decade, he worked on developing anti-PD-L1 to combat the protein.

24
00:02:16.348 --> 00:02:22.804
This effect [is] tentatively long-lasting, meaning if it [the] patient responds, they responds [respond for] years.

25
00:02:23.586 --> 00:02:25.853
[The] immune system still continue[s] [to] attack the cancer.

26
00:02:27.208 --> 00:02:31.864
This is one of Maureen's scans from June 2010, before starting the immunotherapy.

27
00:02:32.578 --> 00:02:37.795
You can see the large mass in her lung. And this is from just a few months later. 

28
00:02:38.183 --> 00:02:43.483
The mass, which had not responded to chemotherapy, significantly shrunk, almost gone.

29
00:02:43.985 --> 00:02:47.791
And critically, there were no signs of new growth in other areas of the body.

30
00:02:48.433 --> 00:02:51.816
And now it's two years after she finished her two years of therapy.

31
00:02:52.064 --> 00:02:58.445
So, it's four years since she started Nivolumab, and at that point she had a prognosis again of a few months,

32
00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:03.218
and we recently did a PET scan just to see, and we saw nothing.

33
00:03:03.451 --> 00:03:04.856
There was no activity at all.

34
00:03:05.325 --> 00:03:09.062
Immunotherapy doesn't work for every patient or every cancer.

35
00:03:09.536 --> 00:03:11.758
That's what Dr. Chen and others are working on now --

36
00:03:12.022 --> 00:03:19.015
to find out why, for instance, not everyone expresses the PD-L1 protein, and what other proteins might exist.

37
00:03:19.685 --> 00:03:25.265
Combining immunotherapy with traditional treatments like chemo and radiation appear to be the way of the future.