Utah kids with terminal cancer are trying revolutionary new experimental
compounds which have never been tested on humans before.
And some are showing dramatic results.
Science Specialist Ed Yeates reports from inside Primary Children's
Hospital.
If you're a child with cancer and every therapy has failed, this is now
the place to try something new!
Perhaps it's a compound from a sea urchin or a weed.
The fountain here respresents courage - the future!
And who better symbolizes that than a small group of kids called the
cancer crusaders.
Twelve-year-old Natalie Burdick's leukemia is in remission. And even
though it's a serious form which has come back on her many times, Doctor
William Carroll is optimistic.
"She continues to be in remission for a very long time so I'm quite optimistic
that her cancer is long gone by now," he says.
Natalie is taking a new compound synthesized from the Poke weed.
BeePap, as it's called, has proven its worth in test tubes and in animals
- but never before in humans.
Under a unique partnership with the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the
University of Utah, Natalie volunteered to try the stuff as a preventive
therapy to keep her cancer from coming back.
Her father, Max Burdick, says, "When we first learned that Natalie had relapsed
and that we were going to start all over again with the nightmare, we tried to
figure out anything we could and look anywhere we could for answers."
Beepap is one of several experimental compounds - the byproduct of genetic
blueprints - maps, if you will like these, which mark a cancer cell's ON and
OFF switches.
The drug is a new generation war machine which bypasses normal cells.
Dr. Carroll says, "What we're using now is sort of like a series of smart bombs
which is a compound specifically targeted to binding to the cancer cell. And
once internalized, it activates the bomb."
Natalie is still not completely out of the woods - but the outcome so far
looks mighty good. For Natalie, it's a done deal.
"It feels really good," she says. "I'm just really happy to get over with
this stuff."
Twenty years ago, the survival rate for childhood leukemias was 11
percent. Now it's up 75 to 80 percent.
The goal of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah is
to close that gap. The projection is extremely bold!
"There's no question in my mind that that cure rate is going to go from 80 to
85 to 90 to 95 percent by the year 2010," Dr. Carroll predicts.
Natalie and others like her are crusaders. They've got their hands on that
last window - pulling hard with experimental recipes - hoping to close it once
and for all.
Natalie says, "I want to help other kids so they don't have to go through what
I did. I want to help other kids and make them feel good, that they're going to
be okay and stuff."
Primary is among only a handful of children's hospitals approved to try
out these experimental compounds - and it's just the beginning for the Huntsman
Cancer Institute.
Tomorrow, Dick Nourse talks exclusively one on one with John Huntsman about
the cancers both men have shared and the long-range plans for what is now
becoming one of the most prestigious research centers in the country.
