Missing Man's Body Found in Nebraska; Closer to a Cure for Cancer
KAYE: Dying from lung cancer, skin cancer, or breast cancer may soon be as rare as dying from pneumonia. That is the hope of doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston who say that they'll soon be able to radically lower the death rate from several cancers. CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, got an exclusive interview with researchers at the world's largest cancer center.</s>DR. RONALD DEPINHO, MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER: We're in a position to make dramatic impact on cancer mortality in this decade.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You're saying if we do everything right, in five years from now, there will be far fewer people dying from cancer, right?</s>DEPINHO: Correct. I think that with the existing knowledge and the application of what we now know, we can begin to see dramatic declines in mortality that would accelerate in years five through ten and beyond set the stage for ultimate control of the disease.</s>KAYE: I spoke with Sanjay earlier and I asked him about the specific cancers MD Anderson is talking about.</s>GUPTA: They are awfully confident. I spent some time with them. And I'll tell you the specific cancer but let me preface by saying Randi, you know, you almost got the sense he had the energy of when President Kennedy talked about sending a man to the moon. That they're calling this the moon shot project to sort of raise that same passion about this particular project that they've taken on. You can take a look at the list there of the various cancers, Randi. They're big ones -- melanoma, lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer overall. You have triple negative breast cancer, for example, Randi. That's often a very difficult cancer to treat. And in many of these cancers on that list, they say within the next few years, not a long time in the future, but in the next few years, dramatically cut down mortality by more than half. And then go even further after that.</s>KAYE: Their intent, they say is to cure, but hasn't that been the mission really for decades now? I mean what makes them closer now to a cure than ever before?</s>GUPTA: Yes, you know, I asked that same question. And the man that you just heard from there, he's the president of MD Anderson, the largest cancer center in the world. He's a cancer doctor. That's an institution with more than a thousand clinical trials going on. What he will say is look, we've been learning all along, and with the science that we know right now, we can make leaps and bounds toward getting to that cure. A quick example. We hear a lot about mapping the genome and studying people's genes, but with the science that we know now, you can find specific markers for certain cancers. And you can test for those early on in life and be able to prevent a lot of those cancers from ever occurring as a result of those sorts of screenings. Lung cancer is one of the biggest cancer killers, again, as I mentioned, but we know how to screen for cancer but we don't know who to screen. And it's in those areas, they sound more simple, Randi, than the wonder drugs that we're used to hearing about. But it's in those areas that you could make a dramatic difference of preventing a lot of these cancers in the first place. It's not to say that the futuristic medications and ways of using these medications aren't there. But it's really -- it's a multiple different things going on at the same time.</s>KAYE: Yes. You certainly spent a lot of time in their labs looking at all of the research. On what particular cancer do they think that they're going to have the greatest immediate impact?</s>GUPTA: I think melanoma. You know, we put that one at the top of the list based on everything that we saw and spending a lot of time with these doctors. What you're looking at there is a young man who has what was known as Stage 4 melanoma. People who have dealt with cancer understand this. But it's when the melanoma has spread throughout the entire body. Right now there's not a lot of options for someone like him. He's a minor league baseball player from the Midwest. He's a coach now. He came here and basically what he's undergoing there is the way that they're taking his immune cells -- cells from the immune system -- and then teaching them how to fight the cancer. So they're actually harnessing the power of your body's own immune system and putting it back in the body and saying go find the melanoma and kill it. And that sort of approach has been tried in various ways before but this is one of the first times in the world that what you're seeing there is actually happening. And they have great faith in this sort of therapy.</s>KAYE: It's amazing. You know, I lost my mother to lung cancer, so it's incredible to see such progress being made already and such commitment.</s>GUPTA: Absolutely. I mean, it's a lot of money. The cancer research funds and grants have dried up, as you know. But they think $3 billion over the next ten years to reach this very audacious goal.</s>KAYE: And don't miss Sanjay's special report "CHASING THE CURE", that's this weekend. It airs today at 4:30 Eastern and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN. The debate over Medicare heats up with both presidential campaigns blasting the other's plans. But some older voters aren't happy with what they're hearing and they're not shy about letting one candidate know it.