Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

'Paging Dr. Gupta'

Aired February 20, 2004 - 08:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A new vaccine has produced some startling results in fighting lung cancer, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta at CNN Center has more on what could be a breakthrough treatment.
Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

These are the good stories, the important stories, we are giving it to you early, talking about a possible vaccine for lung cancer. Lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer for both men and women, 90 percent of those deaths coming from tobacco smoke. So don't smoke. But certainly if you had had an operation, chemotherapy, radiation. Those are the conventional therapies for lung cancer, there may be another tool now in that fight against lung cancer. It's a vaccine, a lung cancer vaccine.

I want to talk about this study. It's a small, it's an early study like I mentioned, but a very important one, a three-year study, 43 lung cancer patients, 10 of them in the early stages, 33 in the advanced stages. They received a vaccine, they got the vaccine every two weeks for three years.

Of some of the advanced lung cancer patients, take a look at some of the findings now, in three of the patients, the cancer disappeared completely. In those patients, chemotherapy had not previously worked. In two of the three patients, they had received the previous chemotherapy and did not work. Other patients cancers did not spread for five months to two years. Again, mainly, these are patients who were resistant to lung cancer chemotherapy in the past.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words. Take a look at some of these pictures now. These are the pictures. The picture on the left is before the vaccine. I think the arrow pretty clear demonstrates what is a cancer nodule within the lung fields. After the vaccine on the right, no cancer nodule. Take a look at another image as well, same sort of issue. You see the cancer, again, the arrow is at the bottom right. On the image on the left there, you can see a cancer nodule. And on the right side, that picture, the cancer nodule, gone again.

This is a vaccine, Bill, this is an injection. This is not chemotherapy radiation or operations, pretty promising, very early, but people are pretty excited about this.

HEMMER: One thing you constantly preach, Sanjay, is the size of the study, and you mentioned a couple of times, it was a small study. Given that fact, how do the normal survival rates compare with those who have conducted the study?

GUPTA: Right, and the reason we do make a big deal about that is, obviously, as you start to increase the numbers in a particular trial, you start to get some statistical variations that could pan out to be very important. So some things you think are as important aren't with later studies.

But take a look at the numbers, though. These are hard to argue with. Right now, someone who's diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer, who's resistant to chemotherapy, their lifespan 4-6 months without the vaccine, if you get the vaccine, 11 months. Is that a big difference? It's more than double in some of those patients. Could that pan out to be a bigger deal as you increase the number of patients in a trial? Perhaps. The patients who had a better response to the vaccine incidentally, 1-3 years, so there are some patients who may have immense success with this sort of lung cancer vaccine down the road -- Bill.

HEMMER: And you showed us that picture. I don't know if we can go back to it or not, or perhaps you want to show us some other images, but how does this vaccine work when you talk about lung cancer?

GUPTA: Again, the images, again, really we are seeing, again, the nodule going away before and after. But the way it works is probably the most exciting thing about this. In a nutshell, basically what happens is you take some of the tumor cells from the patient's body and you essentially inject them with some sort of gene that makes the body recognize cancer cells throughout the body as foreign. What you are essentially doing is teaching your body's immune system to attack the cancer. It's been something scientists have been working on for years. They already do it with some sorts of cancer, but this is the first time they'd actually do it with lung cancer, teaching your body's immune system that the tumor is the enemy, is the foreign object. Attack it, get rid of it, and that's the way it essentially works -- Bill.

HEMMER: All right, Sanjay, thanks, appreciate it. Sanjay Gupta

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired February 20, 2004 - 08:43   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A new vaccine has produced some startling results in fighting lung cancer, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta at CNN Center has more on what could be a breakthrough treatment.
Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

These are the good stories, the important stories, we are giving it to you early, talking about a possible vaccine for lung cancer. Lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer for both men and women, 90 percent of those deaths coming from tobacco smoke. So don't smoke. But certainly if you had had an operation, chemotherapy, radiation. Those are the conventional therapies for lung cancer, there may be another tool now in that fight against lung cancer. It's a vaccine, a lung cancer vaccine.

I want to talk about this study. It's a small, it's an early study like I mentioned, but a very important one, a three-year study, 43 lung cancer patients, 10 of them in the early stages, 33 in the advanced stages. They received a vaccine, they got the vaccine every two weeks for three years.

Of some of the advanced lung cancer patients, take a look at some of the findings now, in three of the patients, the cancer disappeared completely. In those patients, chemotherapy had not previously worked. In two of the three patients, they had received the previous chemotherapy and did not work. Other patients cancers did not spread for five months to two years. Again, mainly, these are patients who were resistant to lung cancer chemotherapy in the past.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words. Take a look at some of these pictures now. These are the pictures. The picture on the left is before the vaccine. I think the arrow pretty clear demonstrates what is a cancer nodule within the lung fields. After the vaccine on the right, no cancer nodule. Take a look at another image as well, same sort of issue. You see the cancer, again, the arrow is at the bottom right. On the image on the left there, you can see a cancer nodule. And on the right side, that picture, the cancer nodule, gone again.

This is a vaccine, Bill, this is an injection. This is not chemotherapy radiation or operations, pretty promising, very early, but people are pretty excited about this.

HEMMER: One thing you constantly preach, Sanjay, is the size of the study, and you mentioned a couple of times, it was a small study. Given that fact, how do the normal survival rates compare with those who have conducted the study?

GUPTA: Right, and the reason we do make a big deal about that is, obviously, as you start to increase the numbers in a particular trial, you start to get some statistical variations that could pan out to be very important. So some things you think are as important aren't with later studies.

But take a look at the numbers, though. These are hard to argue with. Right now, someone who's diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer, who's resistant to chemotherapy, their lifespan 4-6 months without the vaccine, if you get the vaccine, 11 months. Is that a big difference? It's more than double in some of those patients. Could that pan out to be a bigger deal as you increase the number of patients in a trial? Perhaps. The patients who had a better response to the vaccine incidentally, 1-3 years, so there are some patients who may have immense success with this sort of lung cancer vaccine down the road -- Bill.

HEMMER: And you showed us that picture. I don't know if we can go back to it or not, or perhaps you want to show us some other images, but how does this vaccine work when you talk about lung cancer?

GUPTA: Again, the images, again, really we are seeing, again, the nodule going away before and after. But the way it works is probably the most exciting thing about this. In a nutshell, basically what happens is you take some of the tumor cells from the patient's body and you essentially inject them with some sort of gene that makes the body recognize cancer cells throughout the body as foreign. What you are essentially doing is teaching your body's immune system to attack the cancer. It's been something scientists have been working on for years. They already do it with some sorts of cancer, but this is the first time they'd actually do it with lung cancer, teaching your body's immune system that the tumor is the enemy, is the foreign object. Attack it, get rid of it, and that's the way it essentially works -- Bill.

HEMMER: All right, Sanjay, thanks, appreciate it. Sanjay Gupta

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com