http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1427594.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1427594.htm

Broadcast: 01/08/2005

New bowel cancer treatment offers hope for sufferers
Reporter: Natasha Johnson


KERRY O'BRIEN: Eleven thousand Australians are diagnosed with bowel
cancer each year and it's one of the top three killers. One of the
difficulties in treating the disease is that symptoms often don't
appear until the cancer is well advanced and has spread to other
organs. Now the Ludwig Institute and the Austin Hospital in Melbourne
are developing a potential new treatment that involves unleashing a
radiation-primed antibody into the bloodstream and sending it on a
search-and-destroy mission for colon cancer cells that have spread
throughout the body. It's early days, but trials on patients are
showing promising results as Natasha Johnson reports.

NATASHA JOHNSON: As a former professional golfer, 70-year-old Jeff
Giles knows all about mental toughness. And he needed every bit of it
to cope with his diagnosis of advanced colon cancer.

JEFF GILES: I was diagnosed in October of 2,000 and the prognosis was
pretty frightening. It said that if I didn't have treatment, they
were sort of saying 11-12 months and if I did have treatment, 17-18
months. So it didn't get a lot better.

NATASHA JOHNSON: He had surgery to remove the primary tumour in the
colon, which is the large tubular part of the bowel, but
unfortunately the cancer had also spread to his liver. Like many
sufferers, he had no early symptoms.

JEFF GILES: I'd obviously had the cancer for quite some time, but it
had been brewing away slowly and cancer is regarded amongst the
medical profession as sort of the silent worker and it was working
fairly silently with me.

NATASHA JOHNSON: About 11,000 Australians are diagnosed with bowel
cancer every year and 50 per cent of them will die from the disease.

DR NIALL TEBBUTT, ONCOLOGIST, AUSTIN HOSPITAL: Well, it all really
very much depends on the stage in which the cancer is diagnosed.
Sometimes cancer is diagnosed in the early stages, in which case
surgical treatment alone may be sufficient to achieve a cure. Some
cases, the best chance of a cure may come from a combination of
surgery and chemotherapy treatment. But unfortunately in many cases
cancer is detected at a stage when it has already spread to other
organs and usually in those cases, it won't be possible to cure the
cancer.

NATASHA JOHNSON: It's these worst-case patients who are being offered
a glimmer of hope from an experimental treatment being developed by
the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Austin Hospital in
Melbourne. Patients like Jeff Giles, who've run out of conventional
treatment options, are taking part in trials of an antibody which can
hunt down colon cancer cells which have spread from the primary site.

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT, LUDWIG INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH: The
antibody is developed by the normal immune system and can identify
foreign organisms or abnormal cells in the body and can destroy them.
What we have done is taken that unique specificity of the immune
system and developed an antibody which can directly target colon
cancer cells, wherever they may be in the body.

NATASHA JOHNSON: They're then using the antibody as a vehicle to
deliver a dose of radiation straight to the cancer tumour. Here's how
it works. The antibody is given to the patient intravenously and sent
on a search-and-destroy mission through the blood stream. Once it
finds the colon cancer cells - in Jeff Giles's case in the liver - it
unloads the radiation into the tumour.

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT: So wherever those cells are in the body, the
antibody can traffic and identify them and deliver the radiation
directly to the cancer cell and by doing that it avoids the normal
tissue toxicity and side effects which can often be seen with cancer
therapies.

DR NIALL TEBBUTT: It's not generally possible to use radiation to
treat cancers that have spread, for instance, cancers that have
spread to the lung or to the liver, because, you know, what you are
doing there, there's often multiple sites involved and what you need
is an ability to direct the radiation specifically to the tumour.

NATASHA JOHNSON: The patient then undergoes scans so researchers can
track the antibody's progress throughout the body and in Jeff Giles's
case, it was mission accomplished.

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT: Showing here the tumour, which is actually
within the liver itself, lighting up and having been targeted by the
antibody.

NATASHA JOHNSON: So this shows you that the antibody has found its
mark?

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT: Exactly.

NATASHA JOHNSON: About 30 patients have undergo the tumour-targeting
treatment so far. These early trials have been primarily about
testing safety and dose tolerance, so researchers didn't expect the
low levels of radiation to have an impact on such advanced tumours,
but the results have been better than they anticipated.

DR NIALL TEBBUTT: It's been encouraging to see some evidence that
there is some effect on the tumours, that we are either seeing
stabilisation of tumours, stopping them growing, or achieving some
shrinkage of tumours, and that's obviously encouraging. I think it is
obviously important to say we've only treated a small number of
patients and it's very early days in the development of this agent.

NATASHA JOHNSON: Jeff Giles is one of the lucky ones.

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT: Jeff had this particular tumour you can see
here in his liver shrink, following the treatment itself, and this
has, in fact, remained at that state for the last 12 months. So
that's a very encouraging result for us.

NATASHA JOHNSON: Would he be one of your better results?

PROFESSOR ANDREW SCOTT: He's certainly one of our star patients.

NATASHA JOHNSON: These promising results have been enough to convince
America's National Institutes of Health to award a grant of $325,000
for further clinical trials combining chemotherapy with the antibody
treatment, although it's likely to be several years before the
therapy is available for widespread use. But it's already made a
difference for Jeff Giles and his family - five more years of life
than he expected.

JEFF GILES: I'm so thankful that I've got involved. I mean, I might
not get the final answer or a cure, but, boy, it's given me five
years, just on, of extra time. I mean, I thought at the time, "God,
am I gonna reach 70?" I had my 70th birthday in April. Am I going to
go overseas again? Just come back. What can I say? I'm a willing
guinea pig and I'm very willing to go along with it. (Laughs).

KERRY O'BRIEN: A story on which we hope the good news keeps coming.