- 1 week ago
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00I think cancer plays the role of a bogeyman in society.
00:11It has evolved with us, it is part of us, and it kills without prejudice.
00:17We can't continue to catch cancer at the last throes of its existence when it is killing people.
00:30Wouldn't it be amazing to actually go one step further and stop cancer from starting
00:37at all?
00:39Research is where hope starts.
00:43It's optimism and it's a belief that we can know what is currently unknowable.
00:49And that's the challenge.
00:52Ultimately, it could change the world.
00:56For generations, a cancer diagnosis left almost no hope.
01:01It's a terrifying disease that has stalked us for millennia.
01:06I didn't expect I had cancer because all the tests were coming back negative.
01:10I don't think my body can take any more.
01:13Science has fought hard against it, and now the tide is finally turning.
01:18One of our key goals is to transform this idea of cancer as a death sentence.
01:23A group of trailblazing scientists are making new breakthroughs.
01:30We now need to take those discoveries and make them work for patients.
01:35This is the world's first lung cancer prevention vaccine.
01:40Finding cures and finding ways to stop cancer before it even starts.
01:45The tumour seems to be shrinking.
01:47Shocked.
01:48No, wildest dreams.
01:49I wouldn't expect that.
01:50Creating a future where cancer doesn't win.
01:54We're getting very close to defeating cancer once and for all.
01:59What's not curable today could be curable tomorrow.
02:06What's not curable today?
02:32Hello, Trevor.
02:34Good morning.
02:35Good morning.
02:36On time then.
02:37Is it OK if I take a blood?
02:38You can, yes, aye, if you can find a vein.
02:42We'll see how we get on to things.
02:44I think we'll go for our favourite thing.
02:45Yeah.
02:46You're right on.
02:47Saturday, she got in there fine.
02:49Did she now?
02:50Yes.
02:5168-year-old Trevor is at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, being treated for skin cancer.
02:58I have melanoma.
03:03So I had water my head.
03:06My wife had been nagging me for at least a year to go and see.
03:13And I didn't.
03:14So I should have.
03:16Because I might not have been in the stage where I am now, but, you know, this is life.
03:23That's all done.
03:24That's all done.
03:25First time as well.
03:26Keep up that track record, eh?
03:30I had that cut out in Southampton Hospital and then they found I had secondaries in my
03:43liver and that I could have a year to live.
03:47So I'll take your place down to the lab.
03:53Hopefully you'll get a result within an hour, hour and a half.
03:57Yeah, all right.
03:58Yeah.
03:59Yeah.
04:00Yeah.
04:01And then hopefully we'll get going and get treatment soon.
04:04Lovely.
04:05Thank you very much.
04:06Hi, Dad.
04:07All right.
04:08Yeah, come in.
04:09I'm all right.
04:10Do you want a hot drink at all?
04:11No, I'll just have a water.
04:13He's a typical Navy man.
04:14Very firm, strict.
04:15Didn't want to go and get any help, but eventually did.
04:16Ooh, clouds gone in again.
04:17I think coming from that background, becoming a patient, is quite vulnerable.
04:23How has your start at healing now?
04:25strict. Didn't want to go and get any help, but eventually did.
04:30Oh, the clouds have gone in again.
04:32I think coming from that background, becoming a patient is quite vulnerable.
04:40How is your start at healing now?
04:42Well, it's better than what it was, isn't it?
04:44Yeah, a lot better.
04:45When I went in for the surgery, when the surgery had come in,
04:49he sort of goes, yeah, we've got to cut something about that out.
04:55And I went, what do you mean that? I was told through that.
05:00Ultimately, we all know that life starts being born and it ends with death
05:04and we've all got to go through them all, but it almost felt too early.
05:09I felt angry. I felt upset.
05:13I didn't want to let him know that I was worried.
05:16It's almost like you go into protective mode of your whole family,
05:20our siblings looking out for each other, the grandchildren,
05:23what they were going to miss out on, what we were going to miss out on,
05:26them hard conversations moving forward that we were going to have to have.
05:32I suppose life's up to go on hold a little bit for you, Dad.
05:35Well, if I'd gone when Janice told me in the first place,
05:37I might not have got this far.
05:39So, yes, I can blame myself, but I didn't listen to Janice.
05:43I should have probably gone a year earlier, but maybe it's a man thing, isn't it?
05:48Yeah, I was going to say, it's typical sometimes, isn't it?
05:51I don't know, but, yeah, it is.
05:53Yeah.
05:55It's a journey in itself.
05:57Every little clip of the way of the journey is a rollercoaster of emotions.
06:11In Oxford, Trevor is under the care of Professor Sarah Blagden.
06:16Good morning.
06:17Hello. Morning.
06:18How are you doing?
06:19Hi, Trevor. How are you getting on?
06:20Yeah, good. Thank you very much.
06:21I thought it would be quite useful to show you the images of your cancer cells.
06:26Right, yes.
06:27OK?
06:28I've got them up here on the monitor.
06:29Do you want to have a look?
06:30Yeah.
06:32As you know, your cancer started in your head,
06:34and one of the things that they reported at the beginning
06:37was that they found about four spots on your liver.
06:42Cancer is basically our own cells going rogue.
06:45Changes to your cells can cause uncontrolled cell division.
06:52The mass of these rapidly growing cells competes with our normal cells
06:58and becomes a tumour.
07:00The tumour learns to evade our immune system,
07:04and over time the tumour then blocks blood vessels,
07:08it blocks airways, spreads to other organs in our body,
07:12and damages them as well.
07:15And if untreated, it can drain our body's resources,
07:19until, ultimately, we die of the disease.
07:25With previous treatments having failed,
07:27Trevor's only hope was to join Sarah's immunotherapy trial.
07:33Our bodies have quite a lot of clever defences against cancer.
07:37Our immune systems are constantly watching,
07:40so a lot of the work we're doing at the moment
07:43is to try and really understand it,
07:45so that it's better able to recognise cancer.
07:49The therapy trains Trevor's immune system
07:51to identify and attack cancer cells.
07:55So here is the liver.
07:56You can see that these black dots look abnormal.
08:01It's a treatment that doesn't work for everybody.
08:03Trevor's progress is gauged by routine scans of his tumours.
08:07The ones that are quite regular, like that one,
08:12to me that looks like a cyst,
08:14so that's nothing to worry about,
08:16but the ones with the sort of irregular edges,
08:18like that one, look more like the cancer deposits,
08:21and that's exactly what was reported.
08:24They were growing before you started the study.
08:26They were, you know, at least two and a half centimetres.
08:28Yes, yeah.
08:29And now they're kind of just static.
08:31And the question is,
08:32are there any active tumour cells in those deposits?
08:37So what we would like to do now
08:38is arrange a PAT scan
08:40and use that scan to measure the amount of activity going on
08:43in those liver deposits
08:45to see whether there's any active cancer there.
08:49I'm sensible enough to think
08:51that the chances of it going away completely,
08:53I think, are slim.
08:56But, you know, you live in hope.
08:58Well, I mean...
08:59For the best result.
09:00That's right. I mean, with the immunotherapy studies
09:02they've done so far,
09:03about half of the people respond well.
09:06And 20 years later,
09:08many of them still haven't got disease back.
09:10Yeah.
09:11So it could be that you will have a long remission.
09:13And one day one of us might say the word cure.
09:16Remission would just be nice, yes.
09:19Yeah.
09:20But, yes, you know, let's...
09:23Go back to reality.
09:24Yeah, well...
09:25Yeah, it is, yeah.
09:26But, well, we'll see. We'll see. Who knows?
09:34Before immunotherapy,
09:36we didn't really understand the full power
09:39that the immune system has against cancer.
09:42But this has completely transformed it for us
09:44because it's enabled us now to realise
09:46that we might be able to harness
09:48that very, very powerful immune response
09:51at a cancer before it starts
09:53rather than waiting until it has started.
10:02By 2040,
10:04the number of new cancer cases each year in the UK
10:07is expected to rise to over half a million.
10:11Hi. Hello.
10:12Hello. Nice to see you, Peter.
10:13How are you?
10:14I'm doing OK, thank you.
10:15You're doing all right?
10:16Considering.
10:18On the ward where Sarah works,
10:20150 people regularly come to take part in the clinical trials.
10:26I'm a clinician scientist,
10:27which means that I'm half a practising doctor,
10:30an oncologist who looks after cancer patients,
10:32and the other half I'm a scientist,
10:34so I do research on cancer.
10:40Oncology, you're dealing with the day-to-day reality of cancer
10:43and all its frustrations.
10:47When you know what cancer does,
10:49when you know how long it takes,
10:51sometimes decades, to develop in our bodies,
10:54when you know those various steps it goes through
10:57before it becomes cancer,
10:59and that there is such a long window
11:01that we are currently not intervening,
11:03it feels to me morally wrong
11:06not to go and explore that further
11:09and actually do something to stop it much earlier.
11:13I would feel very dissatisfied if I wasn't doing this right now
11:20because I really feel like I want to make some small amount of difference.
11:27I have a big idea,
11:31which is building on our knowledge from immunotherapy
11:34to really design a series of vaccines against specific cancers,
11:39but then to pull them all into a single vaccine
11:43that you would give to everyone to protect them from cancer.
11:47I will demonstrate with fruit.
11:50Okay, imagine that this is a normal cell, okay?
11:54And normal cells communicate with our immune system via a flag system.
12:00And basically these are just a string of proteins or amino acids
12:04and the immune cell comes past, sees it,
12:06and it says everything's fine and it carries on.
12:08When the normal cell is unwell or anything abnormal happens in the cell,
12:13it then changes the signal and signals something abnormal.
12:16And the immune cells come past
12:18and they just basically recognise, okay, this isn't right.
12:21It binds to the cell and it destroys that abnormal cell.
12:25And this is a really important way
12:27that our cells remain healthy in our bodies.
12:29What we know about cancer cells
12:31is that they also have very abnormal signals,
12:35but unfortunately we're not very good at eradicating cancers from our bodies.
12:41Effectively what happens is the cancer cell evades the immune system
12:44with a kind of cloak of invisibility.
12:46So that means that although they are flagging some abnormal proteins
12:50on the cell surface, the immune cells can't recognise this.
12:54And this enables the cell to grow and grow and become a really nasty established invasive cancer.
13:01Somewhere in the trajectory between a normal cell becoming a cancerous cell,
13:07it goes through a pre-cancer stage and we know now that that takes about ten years.
13:12I liken it to a sort of cocoon and moth.
13:17You know, the cocoon stage is the pre-cancer stage
13:21and it's a stage that can take about a decade
13:24before the moth or the cancer actually occurs.
13:29So it's perfectly possible that you or I have a cancer already developing in our bodies
13:35that will not be diagnosed probably for another decade.
13:38And during that stage, again, the cell is signalling to the immune system
13:45that it's not well, that it's not right.
13:48But it hasn't acquired this cloak of invisibility.
13:52And most times our immune cells are very good at eradicating,
13:55recognising this is abnormal and eradicating these pre-cancers.
13:59And this is probably what happens in our bodies all the time.
14:02So we're probably constantly eradicating pre-cancer.
14:05But some of these cells are breaking through
14:08and they are escaping the immune system.
14:10And that's probably how cancers start in the first place.
14:14So what we're doing with the vaccines is we're basically teaching the immune system
14:19to better recognise those early changes here
14:22to prevent this from then becoming a cancer.
14:26We have this sort of ticking time bomb within us.
14:32I feel a real sense of urgency because I think that we have a once in a generation opportunity
14:39to bring together the technologies and the research that's being conducted.
14:43This is an opportunity that can't wait. The opportunity is now.
14:48Hello, Julie. Hi, my name is Professor Blagden.
15:11In Oxford, oncologist Sarah Blagden is on a mission to create a vaccine against cancer
15:16that is the first of its kind in the world.
15:20You're having your transfusion today.
15:22Yes, I am.
15:23How are you feeling? You must be exhausted.
15:25I am very exhausted.
15:26Yeah.
15:27Going to bed in the afternoons for sleep.
15:30What we call cancer is at the end of a very long disease process that's taken place in our bodies.
15:35And at this point in time, that process is too often being allowed to happen without any intervention whatsoever.
15:48Sarah leads a research group at the University of Oxford to develop the vaccine.
15:53In the last 50 years, research has helped double cancer survival. But it's not all good news.
16:00We know that the incidence of cancer is growing year on year. Cancer is on the rise and we need to do something about it soon.
16:10Our destination is ultimately to protect everyone against cancer.
16:15But you have to start somewhere.
16:22And lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK.
16:26There are almost 50,000 cases of lung cancer diagnosed every year.
16:33With the lung cancer vaccine, we have taken and modified a virus and loaded it with genetic instructions.
16:40And these instructions are teaching our immune cells to recognize early changes that happen in the lungs as they transition towards cancer.
16:51So what we're doing is we are teaching your immune cells, we're priming them to recognize and destroy pre-cancerous cells as soon as they start to develop.
17:02And these cells are then able to pass that knowledge around to more and more immune cells, which can then patrol the lung and other tissues for any cells that are starting to transition towards cancer.
17:21Zenaida is a post-doctoral researcher leading the pre-clinical lab testing of the vaccine.
17:26My job is to test that we can actually train immune system to see and attack cancer cells.
17:37So we need to show that the vaccine can do a job so we can take it into a clinical trial.
17:45When I first came up with this idea, I felt too embarrassed to say it in public because it just seemed ludicrously optimistic.
17:53But actually we're starting to think maybe it isn't such a mad idea.
18:00I often walk to get, you know, a drink or food and then you see patients who have exhausted all of their treatment options.
18:08Of course you want to do something that is going to help them have better quality of life.
18:13So from that point of view, it keeps you going, but there is also that stress.
18:17How fast can I get there?
18:18Zenaida will present the results to Sarah when the tests are complete.
18:27It's really important to show that the vaccine works in cells before we take it into people.
18:34If it can't, then we've designed it wrong.
18:36Just coming.
18:37Hello.
18:38Hello.
18:39Hi.
18:40How are you joining?
18:41Very good.
18:42I wanted to be a doctor since I was about six.
18:43So I want to see this trunk.
18:44Oh, yes.
18:45Right.
18:46I mean, I did have a phase of wanting to be a ballet dancer.
18:50Okay.
18:51Oh, my God.
18:52It's massive.
18:53I think I was a little bit too physically lazy for that.
18:56Oh, my God.
18:57That's the lead line.
18:58I remember at one point I had an insect hospital and I had little beds for injured insects.
19:04Wow.
19:05It's like a treasure trove.
19:06Yes.
19:07I don't know.
19:08I suppose I probably wanted to heal them.
19:09Hey, look at this.
19:10Hey, look at this.
19:11Dad's medal.
19:12Right.
19:13Do you want to keep that, Mom?
19:14I think I was quite serious, actually, as a kid.
19:15We were an army family and we moved around a lot and we moved around a lot.
19:16And we were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
19:17We were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
19:29Wow.
19:30It's like a treasure trove.
19:31Yes.
19:32I don't know.
19:33I suppose I probably wanted to heal them.
19:36Hey, look at this.
19:37Dad's medal.
19:38Right.
19:39Do you want to keep that, Mom?
19:40I think I was quite serious, actually, as a kid.
19:42We were an army family and we moved around a lot and we would be expected to kind of behave and turn up at things.
19:46and all that sort of stuff that army brats have to do.
19:50What is this?
19:51That's a landmine.
19:52Obviously it's not live.
19:53No.
19:55My father cleared minefields out in war-torn places around the world.
20:01Oh, there's Dad.
20:04I think his frustration was its impact on civilians.
20:08You know, people who had no intention of getting drawn into a war
20:11and ten years later might be walking a field
20:14and then suddenly a landmine going off.
20:23Do you remember when I was doing my pathology exam and I was totally stressed?
20:26And Daddy was working for the UN at that point
20:28and he was about to go and clear some mines.
20:30I rang him and said,
20:31I'm really terrified I've got this exam.
20:33I've decided I'm not going to sit it.
20:34I'm going to back out because I can't do it.
20:36I'm too stressed.
20:37And Dad said,
20:38Sarah, one of us is going to do an exam tomorrow
20:42and one of us is going to a minefield.
20:44Which one would you prefer to be?
20:49He genuinely wanted the world to be a better place.
20:54He was a problem solver.
20:56And I do think about him quite a lot because my work now is sort of similar.
21:03The pre-cancer within us is a bit like that unexploded mine.
21:08It's a funny parallel really.
21:11I think for both it is about prevention.
21:15Today is really hot.
21:29I don't like the sun anyway, but I think you're possibly a bit conscious of me because of my cancer.
21:35But yeah, if it's really bright sunshine, I do for a baseball hat on or something.
21:42Whether it's, you know, closing the door after the horse has bolted, I don't know.
21:48Trevor is coming to the Churchill Hospital for a scan that will show how active the cancer cells are in his tumours
21:54after two years of immunotherapy.
21:56There's a bit of curiosity.
22:01I think the main thing is where the treatment goes from this point forward.
22:09We would love to go to Australia and New Zealand because my wife has relatives out there and her brothers in New Zealand.
22:17And we were sort of in the process of sorting that out when I got my cancer diagnosed.
22:24So it's all gone on the back burner.
22:27But I don't see the point of thinking too far ahead.
22:31I fully expect there to still be activity there because cancer is cancer, isn't it?
22:38Nobody thinks you've got to be cured 100%.
22:40Today, Sarah will hear the results of preclinical testing on her lung cancer vaccine.
22:57If we're able to trigger an immune reaction, it would be a really encouraging sign that we were onto something.
23:08Hello.
23:09How much do I want it?
23:11I mean, it matters more than anything.
23:15Well, I think without much ado, Zeed, we're very much looking forward to hearing the results of your preclinical testing.
23:26So I've tested the efficacy and I know if I take it during the prime response, I get very good efficacy of the vaccine.
23:36Here you can see the green cells suggesting that the vaccine can be taken by immune cells directly.
23:42But I think it's really important to actually do the actual clinical trial to see if what I'm seeing actually represents what we will see in patients.
23:52Well done.
23:53Well done.
23:54Very good.
23:55That's very exciting.
23:56The next step is for us to put together a trial package to the MHRA and they would like to see some efficacy data.
24:04Then they'll give us a clinical trial authorization, a CTA, and then we can go ahead with, you know, getting the study up and running.
24:12So we need to get on with it and get the funding.
24:14That's the next challenge.
24:19I hope I'm going to be able to get funding, but actually we haven't so far.
24:26I just put in another application to some funders.
24:29This is the third time and I'm waiting to hear whether or not we've been successful.
24:32So the next few weeks are going to be a little bit stressful.
24:35Science is always like this, unfortunately.
24:39Yeah, you have to, there's no guarantee of funding.
24:42You've got to just keep on going.
24:52The success of the vaccine depends on something crucial.
24:56Understanding the earliest stages of cancer's development.
24:59Another area of Sarah's research looks for key insight about how tumours start.
25:07The Millie study is focused on people with a condition called Lee-Fraumeni syndrome.
25:13Most have inherited a mutation in one of their genes that means that they have a 90% risk of developing cancer.
25:23And so we're sort of testing an intervention in that group.
25:26This study is very important for us because it teaches us about how cancer starts.
25:34It will help us design interventions like vaccines that we can then give to communities such as people at high cancer risk like those with Lee-Fraumeni syndrome.
25:45But can also be used in a sort of broader context to protect the general population against cancer in the future.
25:51200 people with Lee-Fraumeni syndrome are being recruited to the study.
25:58One of them hoping to join is Ella.
26:01When I was nine months old, I wasn't eating, I was crying all the time.
26:07And my mum just couldn't work out what was wrong with me.
26:10And the doctors told my mum that she was just being a first time mum, she was just worrying.
26:17But my mum was so persistent that eventually I had an ultrasound scan and it filled a tennis ball sized tumour on my adrenal glands.
26:27This is the scar I've had since I was nine months old.
26:33Just because of the size of it and because of how small I was, they had to make a very large incision.
26:40I was literally cut in half and as I got older and I've grown, the scar has just grown with my body.
26:46When I was a teenager, I always wished I didn't have it and wondered what I'd look like without it.
26:54Obviously young girls wear crop tops and when I got my belly button pierced, I thought it would look nice, but obviously I look different to everyone else.
27:02But I'm used to it now. It's a representation of what my body's been through and how strong it is.
27:06I've had this my whole life and it's the only way I've ever known my body to look.
27:15Somebody with Lee Fraumini is at risk of cancer at any time in their life.
27:20And many will have their first cancer diagnosis before the age of 30.
27:25And then will continue to have cancer diagnoses all the way through their life.
27:29And you're in a constant state of vigilance, really frightened that any day now you might get your next cancer.
27:37When I got diagnosed with breast cancer, I had six rounds of chemotherapy and there was then a discussion whether I should have radiotherapy or not.
27:46I had the double mastectomy in December 2022.
27:50And I had my nipples removed in April 2024.
27:54And the mastectomy scar goes all the way under from here to here.
27:59And then down the front here.
28:01A lot of patients with Lee Fraumini syndrome have been told that it's basically a death sentence and you are just awaiting for cancer at any given moment.
28:20Hope is everything. If you don't have hope, then what are you fighting for? Hope is what keeps me going every day.
28:32I wake up and I think that today's a fresh start. A day to try something new, I guess.
28:37When you think about designing a prevention trial, you need to show that your intervention is working.
28:42And that is hard. It's really hard. You're waiting for a lack of cancer.
28:53Hello.
28:54Hi.
28:55Hi, Ella. Thank you very much for coming.
28:58Come on in.
29:00I've had all these surgeries and they've not even been for preventative measures.
29:03They say have a preventative mastectomy, have a preventative hysterectomy.
29:07I've not had any preventative procedures yet. I've still had five major surgeries.
29:12So it's not about just taking bits out of my body.
29:15It's about what we can do to stop having any surgeries at all, to stop the cancers from ever happening.
29:24Right now, I don't think my body can take any more.
29:38At Oxford's Churchill Hospital, Professor Sarah Blagdon is recruiting participants for a trial, which may give clues about how cancer starts.
29:56Ella has Lee-Fraumeni syndrome, a gene mutation that raises her risk of developing the disease.
30:01The Lee-Fraumeni community was very underserved.
30:07And they have an aberrantly high risk of cancer.
30:11So they don't follow the same trajectory as normal cancers.
30:17And they can't have certain treatments that others can have.
30:21And that just seems wrong.
30:22You know, why are we allowing such a high-risk community to have, you know, not test anything in them?
30:29Why are we letting that happen?
30:32What Sarah learns from this study will help to design new vaccines to prevent cancer.
30:37Not only in people like Ella, but also the rest of the population.
30:42We know that Lee-Fraumeni is caused by a mutation in the P53 gene.
30:48If you imagine your cells as a kind of factory, P53 is like the safety manager.
30:52If anything happens that's abnormal in the cell, the role of P53 is to stop everything, pause everything, correct whatever's going wrong, and then allow the cell to start up again.
31:06If it's a situation where whatever's going on in the cell isn't repairable, then P53's job is to get rid of the cell altogether.
31:15If you have a mutation in P53, the risk of cancer goes up.
31:22So there was some research carried out in the States trying to understand exactly what happens in the cells of someone with LFS.
31:29And one area that keeps coming up is the mitochondria.
31:37Our mitochondria are tiny structures within our cells that are like miniature boilers.
31:44They convert our food into energy, which then really powers our entire body.
31:49And in people with Lee-Fraumeni syndrome, mitochondria are thought to be overactive.
31:57And a byproduct of that is that the cells become damaged as the boiler itself is damaged, making them much more prone to cancer.
32:06Studies have shown that an existing diabetes drug called metformin works by turning down that boiler,
32:13and therefore protecting the cells from becoming damaged.
32:18And this, we hope, will prevent cancer from starting.
32:22And from that I want to start thinking about developing a more targeted drug instead of metformin,
32:30or that could be used in addition to metformin.
32:32And after the study, how long until a drug is developed that can mean LFS patients have access to it?
32:39Yeah, I mean, it depends what we find. It could be that there is an agent that's already out there that we can repurpose.
32:46Or we could, for example, develop something bespoke like a vaccine that you could give.
32:52And, you know, we can turn that around fairly quickly with today's technologies.
32:56So hopefully within my young lifetime?
33:00I'm hoping.
33:01The information we get from that study is relevant for people beyond that heightened risk population.
33:12To me, thank you so much.
33:14Because this gene also misbehaves in other cancers as well, and actually makes them much more aggressive.
33:21So it's really helpful for us to understand how and why that happens.
33:25I think when you see someone like Ella having to sort of have these very serious thoughts and conversations with doctors
33:36about her chance of going just through to the next year without cancer and having to sort of think about that every day,
33:43it's very humbling. And it's also very shocking.
33:46And it just, it surprises me that more hasn't been done in the past to help that community.
33:53And from that community, we'll find the answers that will be important for everyone else.
33:58So it makes total sense to work in that group and try and help them.
34:04I do really think that.
34:09I just cannot imagine abandoning them at this point.
34:16Around 130 people in the UK are diagnosed with lung cancer every day.
34:29Sarah has an idea under consideration to trial the world's first vaccine to prevent it.
34:35It's great to have the idea, but it's actually seeing it through, that's the painful bit.
34:41And we still don't know that we've actually got funding.
34:44Um, which feels very scary.
34:50Sarah recently had a funding application refused.
34:53I just felt completely traumatized about it.
34:57I feel like there is this kind of meteorite that's landing on Earth every day, that's killing people.
35:04And I feel like we've just watched it fall.
35:07Yeah, I just felt beside myself.
35:08I just thought, I cannot, I cannot let this happen.
35:14I mean, funding is vitally important, you know, because without that, we can't pay people to do the research.
35:22We can't buy the equipment that we need.
35:24We can't pay to do the analysis we need to do.
35:26We can't manufacture a vaccine.
35:28We can't fund a clinical trial.
35:31I think if we don't get funding, then I think the momentum would be lost.
35:36We are desperate to get the study going so that one day in the future, everybody can get the vaccine.
35:45My tree?
35:46Your tree.
35:47I used to sit up there for hours on end, just watching everything.
36:00Cancer's not only a professional challenge, but it's also a personal one.
36:05Mum was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, but fortunately quite an early stage.
36:14OK, so what are you taking? Let's have a look.
36:18I'm taking those. I have different ones for morning and different ones for evening.
36:22OK, so those are your blood thinning agents.
36:25I think, to some extent, it does give you a different perspective when you're kind of on the other side.
36:31This one's got to be taken, one to be taken each day, so I take that in the morning.
36:37So that's the breast cancer tablet.
36:39Oh, right.
36:41Actually seeing somebody at home, on their own, really trying to understand which of their medicines they need to take,
36:47it does cast it in a different light.
36:50So what's the plan?
36:52Well, I think it's the 16th.
36:54You're having the operation?
36:55In the afternoon.
36:56Yeah.
36:57To something or other.
36:58I think it's in my diary, so I'm going to come and join you.
36:59Right.
37:00They're going to take out the nodule.
37:03Yes.
37:07She's widowed.
37:08I think it would be a horrible time to get, you know, to get a really advanced cancer.
37:12I think it would be really hard.
37:19Four weeks ago, Sarah submitted her latest funding application for the lung cancer vaccine.
37:24We really want to make sure that we're describing the project, describing the overall, our overall ambition to hold, oh, hey, I've just got the, I've just got the, let me have a look, I think this is the email, the funding.
37:45Okay.
37:47Okay.
37:49It is.
37:51Ah!
37:52Okay.
37:54Right.
37:55Please see the attached feedback from your recent submission.
37:58Your application for the above study was recently considered, and I'm pleased to inform you that it was recommended for support.
38:11That's right.
38:12Actually, that's an Ida.
38:13Hold on.
38:14Z?
38:15Hi.
38:16Hi.
38:17Yep, Z.
38:18Z, just quickly to tell you, we've got the official funding letter.
38:20We have, we have been funded, so congratulations.
38:21Oh, well done.
38:23Well done, you.
38:24I'll speak to you later.
38:25Okay, bye-bye.
38:26Okay, bye.
38:27Bye.
38:28Oh, my God.
38:29I can't believe it.
38:30That is such...
38:31That's massive.
38:32It's a green light.
38:33We know that we can actually start designing the study, and if we show that it's beneficial, then the sky's the limit.
38:45We can just keep designing, you know, using similar approaches to the study.
38:50We can actually start designing the study, and we can show that it's beneficial.
38:53Then the sky's the limit.
38:55then the sky's the limit we can we can just keep designing you know using
39:01similar approaches to prevent other cancers I mean this is a really
39:06important I think this is a really important kind of pivot point in what
39:10we're doing
39:25when Trevor's skin cancer spread to his liver in 2022 he was given just 12
39:38months to live today he's at Churchill Hospital in Oxford for the results of a
39:44scan that will show just how active his tumors are good afternoon here and again
39:51how are you all right 17 okay lovely thank you very much fair to say I know my
40:01way around you know you can know everybody and see a lot of stuff come and
40:07go a lot of patients come and go as well fortunately some cases unfortunate other
40:14cases we are about to see Trevor and he has been on our study where he's had
40:22immunotherapy in combination with a targeted drug for two years he's got
40:28metastatic melanoma and so he has got about 10 deposits of cancer in his liver
40:35so a couple of weeks ago he had a PET scan and my question was are we still
40:40measuring active disease or is this just the the remnants the remains of where
40:44his cancer was positive result will be all the cancers dead and inactive but
40:51realistically I'm not expecting that we're waiting see we're waiting and see
40:54it is I'm not jumping the gun and looking ahead a major part of the job of an
41:04oncologist is giving results to our patients I think sometimes you can just
41:09see someone it's just desperate just to know and be told things very clearly
41:14and you don't want to extend their misery you don't want to drag it out
41:23knock knock hello hello hi afternoon right I was bringing this trolley in yeah
41:29hope you don't mind it's my image in the station be a good idea great okay so the
41:36reason we did the PET scan was to see whether there was any active tumour
41:41cells in there and your scan shows no active disease was in nothing that's
41:49right each lesion is clear um oh yeah I'm sorry I have yes
42:04I'm sorry no don't worry
42:08yes yes shocked obviously I wouldn't know about the streams I was expecting that not at all
42:34there was an intake of breath at the meeting this morning about it yeah so
42:39that means that we can stop the treatment well yes yes
42:45so I can just go home and I sit there so you can go home and have your life back yeah maybe we can
42:54organize our trip to Australia now yeah New Zealand but yes so you can safely say you're in remission
43:00obviously we don't want to say the word cure because we don't know I understand but but I think you
43:07know this is as good or better than we could ever have expected lovely thank you very much for that
43:13worth the junior yeah when a patient like Trevor demonstrates that a treatment is working it is so
43:22powerful because he's demonstrated that people with this disease have the potential to benefit from
43:29the treatment and that opens so many doors for other patients with the same condition it's a bit
43:35of a hit when you're told you've got cancer and you could have you know 12 months to live so you know
43:42that's always in the back of your mind even though you're feeling great and whatever so it'd be really
43:47nice now that I can forget about that now I spent some hours sat in this seat having treatment so
43:56now I can move on enjoy life enjoy with retirement I've just been giving it all clear thank you yes
44:08thank you probably never be back yes it's three years since Sarah first had the idea for her lung
44:28cancer vaccine and so today is an important step towards finally delivering it to the public I think
44:35to be able to see and hold the vaccine for me will be a very pivotal moment in my career
44:43hello and to actually have tangible evidence that we can deliver something is going to be extraordinary
44:53wow this is the world's first lung cancer prevention vaccine I can't quite believe it
45:05it's like my third baby well I just hope that we can get this out as quickly as possible to benefit
45:16as many people as possible not just in the UK but around the world I mean this could be the way that
45:23cancer is prevented
45:53and that hope continues next Thursday night at nine with all episodes available to stream now and
46:10support information for the issues raised can be found online at channel4.com support and it's an
46:16impossible task to juggle life for death cases to decided who is next on the table and why 999 the critical list
46:23available to stream now
Be the first to comment