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Ronald A. DePinho




NEW YORK, Jan. 28, 2010

Mapping Cancer Genes to Find a Cure

Cancer Kills More than 500,000 Americans Annually; 1,500 People a Day


Where America Stands: Cancer

Cancer claims more than 500,000 American lives annually. In the "Where America Stands" series, Katie Couric reports on how the latest research is trying to move beyond chemotherapy to more targeted therapies.


Katie Couric On Cancer Research
One year later, Stand Up 2 Cancer plans to award $73 million to cancer research "dream teams." Katie Couric explains more to Harry Smith.

(CBS)

IN-DEPTH
Common Cancers
Risks, symptoms, detection and treatment of breast and other cancers.
STORIES
How Cancer Victims Can Double Survival
Scientists Unraveling the Cancer Genome
(CBS) In its "Where America Stands" series, CBS News is looking at a broad spectrum of issues facing this country in the new decade.

With a stroke of President Nixon's pen, the National Cancer Act of 1971 elevated the conquest of cancer to a national crusade.

"We may look back on this day and this action as being the most significant action taken during my administration," President Nixon said.

Almost 40 years later, America's so-called war on cancer drags on.

CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric reports the top five cancer killers account for nearly 13 percent of all deaths nationwide. Although the number of new cancer cases has been dropping by 1 percent a year, and cancer deaths have been falling by more than 1.5 percent, cancer still claims more than 500,000 American lives annually. That's 1,500 people every single day.

"That's about one every minute. That's like three jumbo jets crashing every day," said Dr. Francis Collins.

Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health, and oversees the National Cancer Institute.

NCI's budge for cancer research this year is $5.1 billion. But Dr. Collins said if that sounds adequate, we better wake up and smell the coffee.

Learn More about Clinical Trials

"Over the last 30 years, we as a nation have spent $9 per American per year on cancer research. Enough to buy you a couple of lattes," he said.


Still, there have been strides. In the 1970's only half of those diagnosed with any form of cancer lived longer than five years. Now, about two-thirds do. Clearly, that still leaves America's report card with plenty of room for improvement.

"I'd give the country an 'A' for effort in terms of research," Dr. Collins said. "But I'd not really give us much better than about a 'C' in terms of implementation of that into radical new therapies that are both effective and low in toxicity."


THE PROBLEM

The problem facing today's scientific community? How to move cancer treatment beyond the carpet-bombing approach of standard chemotherapy into an era of smart bombs - using targeted therapies that destroy only the cancer.

Beverly Sotir, 71, was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago.

Sotir is one of the 20 percent of patients diagnosed with lung cancer who never smoked. She said she smoked one cigarette at age 16.

An active mother of eight, and grandmother to 14, Sotir was told her cancer was in stage four in both lungs.

"They tell you, you have six months," she said. "And what are you going to do in six months?"

Sotir was first treated with standard chemotherapy - along with a somewhat "off the wall" form of therapy, all her own.

"You hung your lung scans in your bathroom," Couric asked. "Why?"
"Because when I came out of the shower, I wanted to see them," Sotir replied. "And I swear at them every morning."

But doctors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston had yet another approach in mind. Early last year, they screened her tumors for a specific gene called "ALK" - an abnormality found in about five percent of lung cancers, and also common in a type of lymphoma.

"We have a drug that happened to be on the shelf for this particular genetic alteration, that we can now simply apply to those five percent of lung cancers with that genetic alteration," said Dr. Ronald A. DePinho. Dr. DePinho, director of the Belfer Institute for Cancer Science at Dana-Farber, is working on a solution.

Sotir's now participating in a clinical trial - using that drug which targets the defective gene, and turns it off. In the last six months, some of her tumors have shrunk by more than 50 percent - others have disappeared.

"A knowledge of those genes and the genetic alterations that occur in cancer will provide us with new ways of attacking this most dreaded enemy," Dr. DePinho said.