60 Minutes: Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, Cancer Genomes & Immunotherapy

60 Minutes: Disrupting Cancer

You may not know the name Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, but if he is successful in his mission, history will remember him forever. CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta contributed this report for 60 Minutes. Though 1,500 Americans die from Cancer each day, and it is a disease that has baffled medical researchers for decades, Dr Soon-Shiong is optimistic thanks to the news that Cancer research has advanced more in the past five years than ever before.

The Los Angeles doctor and entrepreneur has a net worth of $11 billion, and he is optimistic about the future of Cancer research. His background is as a surgeon, and he eventually developed a multibillion-dollar cancer drug that did not have many early believers. Now, he wants to continue to disrupt the way that Cancer is treated, in hopes of a breakthrough that could change everything.

60 Minutes: Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong Reclassifying Cancer

He used a white board and markers to draw a complex explanation of his plan to beat Cancer, in a process that took 45 minutes just to explain. “The technology to actually do all these things is not just hypothetical,” he said. His company is working on high-speed genome sequencing to battle Cancer like one might confront a chess opponent.

Since Cancer is an inability of cells to die as they naturally should, the company hopes to decode the genetic hiccup that prevents them from doing this, so that genetic mutations can be used to fight back at any form of Cancer, anywhere in the body. This is different than the current approach of treating Cancer based on where it is located in the body.

“Imagine reclassifying Cancer,” Dr Soon-Shiong said. “I am very excited because we are going to create this revolution.” His hope, he told 60 Minutes, is for better outcomes and improved quality of life, with Cancer becoming a chronic disease rather than a terminal one.

60 Minutes: Cancer Genome Sequencing & Cancer Cell Mutations

Though Cancer Genome Sequencing is not a new concept, what Dr Soon-Shiong brings to the table is the ability to scale. He has spent $1 billion of his own on a huge infrastructure, dramatically increasing the speed of the research process, taking it from months to a day. In fact, he has partnered with phone manufacturer BlackBerry to create a device doctors and patients can use to zero in on a specific mutation, identifying a personalized recommendation of the most promising course of treatment.

However, he has his naysayers. Dr Derek Raghavan, president of North Carolina’s Levine Cancer Institute, believes the theory is promising, but that the future is not here quite yet. “I think there’s just too much hard, complex science that has to be done before this is state of the art,” Dr Raghavan said.

Surprisingly, many cell mutations are not threatening. But Dr Soon-Shiong is using stored cancer tissues from Santa Monica’s John Wayne Cancer Institute to map even more genomes and search for patterns among them. Some mutations may lead to death, while other could be benign. Figuring out the difference will be the key to success or failure.

60 Minutes: Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong Abraxane Cancer Drug

Dr Soon-Shiong also wants to change the way cancer drugs are developed. He created a biotechnology company in hopes of accelerating production, and his plan is to churn out 20-30 drugs annually in an attempt to catch up to or even overtake Cancer. He is frustrated with the pace at which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves new drugs.

His drug Abraxane is used to treat Pancreatic Cancer, Breast Cancer, and Lung Cancer, but it took the FDA more than a decade to sign off. “We don’t have that time,” he said. “The war against Cancer is a war against time.” Another of his complaints has to do with trial and error as a treatment approach, comparing current Cancer treatments to a guessing game.

60 Minutes: Cancer T-Cell Immunotherapy

Though there are plenty of people within the medical establishment who look askance at Dr Soon-Shiong’s bold claims and huge goals, patients seem to have another perspective on the man. David Roy, who was diagnosed with Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer in 2012, was given four and a half months to live, until he got in touch with Dr Soon-Shiong.

He was referred to an oncologist at UCLA who came up with a combination therapy of Abraxane and other cancer drugs, while Dr Soon-Shiong sequenced Roy’s tumor genome. How Roy is part of a clinical trial involving another potential treatment.

Dr Soon-Shiong and other oncologists believe in the promise of Immunotherapy, a practice by which the body’s naturally occurring T-cells consume the Cancer cells, killing them off. One potential plan is to generate an excess of T-cells outside the body, before reintroducing them to target the Cancer.

60 Minutes: Liquid Biopsies & Circulating Tumor Cells

Roy is keeping his feet on the ground in terms of his own prognosis, but he hopes that Dr Soon-Shiong and others are on track to radically reduce the death toll from Cancer in the near future. “I have every confidence that my children and grandchildren won’t be concerned about the things that I’m concerned about” when it comes to cancer, Roy said on 60 Minutes.

Another innovative idea from Dr Soon-Shiong has to do with how Cancers metastasize. He advocates for frequent, low-dose Chemotherapy, rather than heavy doses, which he thinks could force Cancer cells to travel through the bloodstream and settle elsewhere in the body.

When Cancer spreads, a patient’s odds for survival decrease. Dr Soon-Shiong hopes that Liquid Biopsies can help by using a bio-chip to detect normal Cancer cells from Circulating Tumor Cells, which are heavier. Once those cells are isolated and removed, they can be studied for new mutations, leaving the door open to the development of more new drugs. “I’m trying to fight this war from all over the place,” Dr Soon-Shiong said. “There’s no one single magic bullet.”