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Biden Arrives in L.A. to Host Summit of the Americas; Biden Administration Reached Out to North Korea, Got No Response; New, Repeating Fast Radio Burst Baffles Astronomers; Cancer Drug Leads to 100 Percent Remission in Every Patient in New Trial. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 08, 2022 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: And thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided that he would kill the Supreme Court Justice. Simply frightening.

It was, again, that he saw two U.S. Marshals and turned the other way. So, certainly, a very close call here, a frightening case that bears a lot of similarities to another case in Wisconsin we covered extensively over the weekend, but just frightening. And again, you know, it bears repeating, this is the kind of crime federal officials have been warning about since the leaked draft opinion surfaced. They are very concerned that domestic violence extremists are going to zero in on Supreme Court justices, their staff, their families, anybody associated with the court. Back to you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Understandably, Whitney Wild, Thank you very much.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Well, President Biden will arrive shortly in Los Angeles to host the Summit of the Americas. Mexico, a key ally will not be there. What the president hopes to achieve, next.

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[15:35:00]

CAMEROTA: Any moment now, President Biden should touch down in Los Angeles where the U.S. is hosting the Summit of the Americas. The White House says the meetings will focus on migration, climate change and pandemic response, but the Summit has already made headlines for who will not be attending.

BLACKWELL: CNN's chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is in L.A. We know that Mexican President Lopez Obrador is boycotting the summit. How will that impact what they can get done?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the White House is really down playing the absence of key leaders, like Mexico's president at this summit. Saying they can still get commitments agreed to. They can still have deals done given they are sending deputies in their place. But of course, it still is really looming over this entire summit that President Biden himself is hosting given there are several key leaders who are openly rebuking him by not coming to the summit. Where they were hoping to really show that U.S. leadership has been reestablished in the region. They wanted to have some critical conversations on migration, on climate change, on recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to build better going forward. Especially when it comes to issues like supply chains.

And with Mexico's leader not coming to this, the White House keeps pointing to the fact he is going to be visiting the White House in July, but the fact that he will be here during this summit is causing issues for the White House. Given of course they'd hoped to have all of these key leaders here.

And so, one other visit that the president is going to be having with a world leader while he's here is with Brazil's President, Bolsonaro, and that is of course the first time that they are going to be meeting face to face. And the White House was saying earlier they are going to have a candid conversation while President Biden is here. And that's a candid conversation that's often White House diplomatic speak for a frank and blunt conversation. Given of course, we've seen Bolsonaro in recent days down playing President Biden's election win, raising questions, casting doubt on the fact that he actually legitimately won the 2020 election. So, that could be one upper point, while you see President Biden here on the ground.

And so, they are going to try to get some commitments agreed to. They've got an economic framework that they are going to be rolling out with several countries while they're here. But of course, migration being a number one topic they are going to be discussing as a caravan is forming in southern Mexico that is already raising concerns about what's happening at the southern border in the United States. All of those are going to be issues on the table. But they are going to be conversations that President Biden is having with the absence of several key leaders from the region.

BLACKWELL: Our Kaitlan Collins for us there in Los Angeles. Thank you, Kaitlan.

CNN is also learning that the Biden administration attempted to contact North Korea last month, but officials have received no response from Pyongyang.

CAMEROTA: The U.S. believes North Korea is preparing to conduct another nuclear test, its 7th this year. CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood joins us now. So, Kylie, why was the Biden administration trying to make contact?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, they reached out to discuss humanitarian cooperation with North Korea. Specifically surrounding COVID-19 because news had just broke in the last month that there were cases of COVID-19 in North Korea. So, the Biden administration was essentially reaching out to talk to them about that, to see how the international community could potentially provide some support. They didn't hear back as you said.

Not all together surprising because there have been a number of times that the Biden administration has reached out to North Korea over the last year and a half both directly or through intermediaries, and they haven't heard back at all. And the Biden administration continues to say that they are still seeking diplomacy with North Korea without any pre-conditions. And essentially, what that means is that they're willing to sit down with the North Koreans to discuss matters including of course their nuclear program without them having to stop their tests that they have been conducting. When it comes to their ballistic missile program. When it comes to the development of their nuclear program.

But their provocations have continued on as the Biden administration has reached out. We should note that just this year alone there have been 31 ballistic missile tests that North Korea has fired off. That is more than any other previous year, and we're only in June. So, that means that there could be a tremendous amount more. And obviously the Biden administration is also warning that they are preparing for another nuclear test, which would add even more provocations and intensity to this relationship -- guys.

BLACKWELL: Kylie Atwood, thank you.

[15:40:00]

This is fascinating, a small cancer drug trial ends with 100 percent of the patients in 100 percent remission.

CAMEROTA: A doctor is going to join us next to explain.

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BLACKWELL: Astronomers say they've detected a new series of rapid, unknown radio bursts in a galaxy far, far away.

CAMEROTA: Up to 4 billion light years away to be exact. Well, Rachel Crane is right next to us. She's CNN's business, innovation, and space correspondent. Rachel, obviously this is outer space aliens trying to communicate with us, right?

RACHEL CRANE, CNN BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: You know, never say never. I'll leave it at that. But probably not this time. So, these fast radio bursts, they were first discovered back in 2007, and they baffled scientists ever since then, and hundreds of them have been detected. But of those hundreds, only 5 percent of them ever repeat these burst of radio waves.

So, what's been discovered now is that of those 5 percent, now two of them have been discovered to in between these big bursts of radio waves have persistent weaker radio waves. So, I know that's a lot to follow there. You kind of have to really think about it. But, you know, this is only the second time that they've detected this. But this leads scientists to believe that now there's perhaps a totally new class of these FRBs.

Now they don't know the origin of these FRBs, what is the cause of them. There have been theories they may be from, you know, a super neutron star left over from a super nova, or a neutron star that has an intense magnetic field called a magneto, but this most recent one, and I'm going to give you the name, it's called FRB-190520.

CAMEROTA: Creative.

CRANE: Yes, very creative. Maybe they'll tweak that in the near future. But it was found in 2019 by a telescope in China, and that's when they detected that it was repeating itself, that it had these in between the bursts, these longer persistent radio waves. And then in 2020, an array of satellites looked at it, and that's when they discovered that it was about 3 to 4 billion light years away in this dwarf galaxy. And so, you know, they're getting more and more data points about it.

[15:45:00]

Of course, as I said scientists don't know the origins of this. What it all means, but they're hoping that these new data points will help them better understand the fabric of our cosmos. And sort of really understand the medium of intergalactic space. So, it's a really crazy thing to wrap your head around but really fun to nerd out on.

BLACKWELL: As we are doing here now with all of you. I wonder, though, what will it take to figure out the answer to that question. Where is that coming from? I mean, to simply have the question, now we know we've got these pulses. How do you get to the answer?

CRANE: Well, you got to keep looking.

BLACKWELL: All right.

CRANE: But this is also why things like the James Webb telescope, which will soon, you know, be sending back data here down to earth, will be such an integral part of better understanding where he come from and our universe. The more eyes in the sky we have, the more data points were going to get and more brain power here on earth, that they can crunch that information and give us hopefully some answers to these big questions.

CAMEROTA: I'm still pretty sure it's space aliens trying to communicate with us.

BLACKWELL: We went through three minutes of this presentation, and you're exactly where we started.

CAMEROTA: But I'll just wait for the answer, I guess. Rachel, thank you so much. And we'll be right back.

[15:50:00]

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BLACKWELL: Today, the CDC announced that it will award more than $200 million to state and public health groups as part of President Biden's Cancer Moonshot Initiative. This is the first part of a five-year investment that will total more than a billion dollars. The goal is to cut cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years, also, to improve the experience for cancer survivors. CAMEROTA: And this initiative was first announced back in 2016 by

then-Vice President Biden after his son Beau died of brain cancer. The program was relaunched in February of this year.

BLACKWELL: Now, a small cancer drug trial is producing extraordinary results. Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center treated 18 rectal cancer patients with an experimental drug. In every single case, the cancer vanished and all the patients are now in remission.

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Dr. Luis Diaz, an oncologist who wrote about this trial for the New England Journal of Medicine. So, Dr. Diaz, tell us why you find the results so astonishing.

DR. LUIS DIAZ, MEDICAL ONCOLOGIST, MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER: Hello, good afternoon and thank you for having me. These results are incredible. You know, I've been treating cancer for about 25 years. And I have never seen a therapy, both either approved or experimental, have a result like we have seen. Sometimes you see the tumor shrink. Sometimes you see the tumor go away, but that's usually just in one or two patients. In this study, we saw the first patient, tumor disappear. Second patient, tumor disappear. We were up to 12 patients, all the tumors disappeared. We're now up to 18 patients and the tumors have all disappeared.

BLACKWELL: Now, again, 18 patients, so it's a small study, but what's it take to get to the next step, to determine if this is replicable for other cancers and if you can get closer to a cure?

DIAZ: Yes, the exciting part here is that this is based on a genetic marker. So, if your tumor has this genetic marker, what we found, and if you give this form of therapy, and it's called an immunotherapy, it can cause the tumors to shrink. But if you treat the cancers early, it can cause the tumors not only to completely shrink away but hopefully remain away so you can avoid things like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

But to your question, and what do we need to do to bring this forward. We need more clinical trials, and we need to not just test this in colorectal cancer but we want to go to diseases like prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, gastric cancer and see if we have similar sorts of effects. Because at the end of the day, we would like to omit the need for chemotherapy, radiation, and most importantly, life-altering surgery, and be able to cure these patients with just a therapeutic.

CAMEROTA: And so, I mean, it does sound like a game changer. I understand why you're so excited about it. You say you have never seen a study like it. And so, is this a different therapy? I mean, has this therapy never been tried before? What makes it such a game changer?

DIAZ: So, it's interesting. This is a therapy that in the late 2010s, early 2010s, started creeping up for the treatment of lung cancer and melanoma and then kidney cancers. And then we started seeing pockets of other diseases where immunotherapy called checkpoint blockade therapy was highly effective, and it's really been a game changer for patients with metastatic disease, with those certain tumor types. We decided to move it to early stage disease, where normally a surgery

was required to cure the patient. So, instead of doing a surgery, we gave this immunotherapy, this checkpoint incubation and we were able to treat it almost like immuno-ablative therapy. So, ablating or removing the tumor completely rather than having to do the surgery. And when we did it very early, all the tumors went away.

BLACKWELL: For people who are watching and asking, how and when and where can I sign up? Can they, for the next trial?

[15:55:00]

DIAZ: Absolutely. And here at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City we are offering this to patients who have this genetic feature. And please call us, look us up online, and we'll be happy with open arms to take care of you.

CAMEROTA: Well, Dr. Luis Diaz, thank you very much for explaining it in layman's terms we can understand, and for being able to end our program on good news. That is really great.

Yes, absolutely great news.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, doctor. I mean, it really is fantastic. When we read about some of the treatments these patients had undergone, leading up to this trial, it really is startling that now they don't need to undergo any of those.

CAMEROTA: Any of the surgeries. I predict they will be getting a lot of emails and calls momentarily.

BLACKWELL: They certainly will.

CAMEROTA: And "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right after this quick break.

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