do you really need protection. north korea is threatening to fast track its nuclear program in response to the latest round of un sanctions the north's foreign ministry says the measures infringe on its right to self-defense the us president donald trump says the sanctions are only a very small step towards dealing with pyongyang's nuclear program. we had a vote yesterday on sanctions we think it's just another very small step. not a big deal rex and i were just discussing not not big i don't know what has any impact but certainly it was nice to get a fifteen to nothing vote but those sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen you know to do. a meeting of the arab league in cairo descended into a shouting match with ministers from qatar in the four blockading countries trading accusations council raise the issue of the boycott which was not on the agenda that

led to a fiery exchange those are your top stories up next it's techno adrian's here with the news out of the back after that season. it's not just phones contributing to sound from bumper profits if we look at the u.s. economy the moment it does seem to be in pretty good shape up until around two thousand and five greek debt levels were basically stable we bring you the stories that are shaping the economic world we live in counting the cost at this time on al-jazeera. right cancer a diagnosis of little room for hope. says the eighteen hundreds doctor suspected the body's immune system might talk to chill for this stuff and. that no one could crack the complex code until this scientists say it. now this is the new face of cancer patients who are living proof of a cure. this is technically

a show about innovations that changed nights we're going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity and they're doing it in the way this is a show about science by scientists. and welcome to the pack there in paris i'm guy. and well hair but that's them incredible. to fight and even cure cancer it's called i mean i look for cancer treatment the tongue the body's own cells into to my killer. i mean i think r.p. is an innovative field of research in this changing lives over the world but we follow one man's amazing journey for tech nerds to crystal do what. david white is about to do something he has done more than one hundred and twenty

times. and i come from anchorage alaska every two weeks he will leave his home in one of the most remote american cities and fly more than five thousand kilometers to houston texas normal treatment and i believe that. my plane at five in the morning and back home and forty four hours two days. it is a better life and death. david isn't rolled in an experimental cancer program at m.d. anderson cancer center in houston texas it has kept him alive well beyond the prediction his doctors once gave at the beginning you didn't think that you would be able to house as you have. now in the beginning the best anybody would give me was twelve to twenty months and i didn't get the much time to get your affairs in

order. and it certainly doesn't give you time to. do what you want to do with your family and children. david has bladder cancer was first diagnosed in two thousand and ten when doctors found small tumor on the wall of his bladder. it's pretty scary isn't it yeah you think it's a small it's less and i think pong ball size they cut it out and you think it through but you aren't we took this serious surgery we removed my bladder didn't work. we thought so but it didn't happen my cancer came back in a year where it was wrapped around my colon and i had a big tumor. that was in two thousand and eleven david underwent chemotherapy and an experimental gene therapy treatment but the cancer kept spreading to his left

lung in two thousand and thirteen then in june of two thousand and thirteen he began the experimental immunotherapy program now david has kept alive by his strong will i think we better start. one thirty. and the drug in this infusion bag. nancy pinkston is on the same drug she was diagnosed with stage three melanoma in february two thousand and sixteen showering. and thought. and does not feel right dr calling. and telling you it's not on. it's a game changer that was almost a year ago. their labs look perfect for me i wanted to live and i thought this was my best chance. is also part of an

experimental therapy treatment at m.d. anderson she began treatment in march of two thousand and sixteen she had her tumor removed surgically in may her oncologist dr hussein are you surprised by how well compared to a very brief surgery these treatments are you know absolute game changers and for nancy the change came quickly and i think. i think. it was at least thirty percent. it was a moment because the price less than half the one tree. difference and the tumor one two pathology there was not a single viable solvent not a single cancer cell which is you know amazing. it is. and found that there was. a little more of a brain nancy first heard about immunotherapy when a former u.s.

president announced he had melanoma that had spread to his brain and was being treated with a hard to pronounce drug named elizabeth i want all of you to remember that name. just a few months later president jimmy carter said he was cured when i went this week they didn't find any cancer at all but the average is. different for what jimmy carter thought. from the same thing and so he explained for me some drugs different manufactures. this new wave of cancer fighting drugs called immunotherapy come in part from the lab and the brain of the scientist dr james alison and his partner and like dr. jim allison breakthrough actually change the whole field i mean what he recognizes that time doesn't just have on switches it also has off switches. and the yang and the man

says that if you keep trying to turn it on it has its own internal controls to keep it turned off and he recognized that if you want to really attack cancer you turn off the off signals the blocking the brakes basically and he developed the first body this way which is enticing telling for because he identifies the telly for as the off signal are one of the off signals now we know there are so many and by blocking seitel it for what an antibody we were able to get the t. cells out to go and keep killing tumor cells and that's why some patients can have . he's responsive so now there's a whole field called the mean checkpoint blockade and that's immunotherapy that we know of today in the clinic. the human immune system is built around white blood cells scientists call t. cells these molecules are so tiny they can't be seen but the humanizing this image from an electron scan shows a healthy human. senses an infection it will attack but with many cancers t.

cells won't attack because the tumour cells are blocking their talking mechanism. immunotherapy overrides those blocking systems allowing t. cells to do their job. like a little more and yes it is i do think it's a war of the you know to terrorist cells and the immune system are battling right the tumor cells are trying to get everything to surround the to protect it and they mean system keeps trying to attack and then when the tumour cells have all of the right things to protect it they mean system a sort of disabled and it can no longer function and what we're trying to do is really energize the immune system so they can get through all the barriers that the two missiles are put up to kill those tumor cells cancer has largely been winning the immune system wars until now we have clinical trials ongoing and prostate cancer bladder cancer kidney cancer leukemia for example c.l.o. for example lymphoma is. pancreatic cancer breast cancer

color rectal cancer varying cancer and so what you're trying to do with each type of cancer is kind of tune that on off for the immune system and find that right balance for that cancer type exactly and sometimes we don't find the right balance sharma and allison's lab is unique with more than eighty human clinical trials and thousands of patients they can test drug therapies and get immediate results from biopsies dr sharma is currently running a study on prostate cancer so far immunotherapy has not been effective but there is hope and so we got this. great i mean we're. trading. right. now the. expression. that. it's a protein that. scientists immune inhibitory. dr

sharma showed us winning the war. drugs were infiltrating the tumor but the. expressed tumor was not shrinking and the cancer not going away all of these little blue dots are individual tumor cells and then over here on the side of all of these colors trying to fight the tumor but. in a little ways like fighting back at. that. point therapies are really block these off signals. for the one. because these are all off signals and are now identified in the t. cells so we think we need combinations strategies for prostate cancer. you got a pretty good understanding know for example of prostate cancer which particular response of. improved were generated.

about what we should answer the question we have no answer for sure but we've got some some ideas which are very strong. data from the patients. that we were. really instrumental and kind of elucidating those checks and balances that exist in the immune system. and how do you get from that to a therapy. to cells which was an undergraduate actually when i first read. literally what was it about. just the whole notion of the cells are you or your body or protect your home it's just so cool. to me that was i thought this might slow but to move a bit and we have to do a lot of combinations to get the word what it turned out of many terms you didn't have to use to signal a direction we had a body that was so you and dr allison are married yet when you came to have your

spouse in the lab with you working in the same field i think of myself as very lucky you know i clearly am passionate about the work that we do jim and i talk about t. cells more than i think any two people in the whole world. you know we get up in the morning talking about it we go to sleep talking about it it's what drives us because a tremendous work we. learn and immune checkpoint therapy is really what is now showing all of this benefit we think other immunotherapy will do that as well including adopted t. cell therapy and these other ways of engineering the t. cells before giving them back to patients you wouldn't think of chemotherapy surgery radiation therapy without adding any therapy any more you've now changed that whole paradigm yes i'm i'm very proud i think you know. it's his passion that i fell in love with to be honest and it's been his passion that drove the work he wanted to see whether or not what he did in the laboratory his basic science could

have clinical impact and he drove that i have to say there were many people who thought that all you're going to take an antibody and block this single molecule and you're going to treat dancer come on give me a break that's not going to work right he got a lot of rejections along the way and he stuck with it but it worked out for everyone not you know not just a science or his career but it work out for so many patients. for some of those patients like david white life has been extended beyond what anyone imagined but it comes with a price infusions come by weekly or paid for by the drug company sponsoring the study but the trips are tough all of this is emotionally hard i think emotions are harder than the physical part so you've had some pretty amazing results on this immunotherapy can you tell me about that. i just you can get lucky. i got responses and six weeks to the a mentor and i haven't had

a recurrence of my cancer in. two years at age seventy two two years have made a huge difference. yes. and what do you want to do now. ok i gave up running but i still coach and referees. thanks again guys thank you he has two young children who are never far from his thoughts is hard to talk about . so when i got cancer nicholas was ten. is about i was four. no or you want to be with the little kids. i think they're a big part of my vote up as should. do i get

a hug before i leave. and i felt like my job and. so necklace is now sixteen he's a g. and you're. going isabelle it's going to be eleven end of this year and she's at the crater big difference. i've been able to be involved in to have an influence on their development life quite a bit it's nice out here that it's fun coaching things. and with the outcomes we've got right now arm i'm hopeful that it's going to be a lot longer at least relative to this part of the disease. so i mean not only did he have a complete remission where we essentially cannot find the tumor back on c.t. imaging he's had a very long term durable remission that's now ongoing for more than two years of

treatment for his labs and the other types of reports that you look at do they look very similar to someone of his age that never was diagnosed with cancer. over time have become more normal more what i've seen in the typical population and so clearly the effects of them you know their b. are certainly relevant they help him he's feeling better he's doing better and his cancer is under control what percentage of the patients in your trial sort of experience this miraculous recovery so around twenty percent or so patients do very well with these clinical trials so it's not everyone but it is a substantial fraction of people that we couldn't do this far before i mean checkpoint therapy became available that gives us hope that we can build on this twenty percent to make it fifty percent eighty percent maybe one hundred percent

i'm not going to sign miracle although it feels like a miracle feels like a huge blessing. and i think it is i think it. checkpoint inhibitor i mean a therapy is just one of the new therapies it seems to work best with cancer is that people get too much sun smoking. but technique is come to paris because of beneath our feet high and it. is called a c.t. or adoptive cells a chance for. scientists take t. cells and genetically edit them this immunotherapy is now undergoing it is fast human test the results are impressive. which year old but she's fighting for her life. just. once she was diagnosed with leukemia it was the only decision there was no doctors tried everything including a bone marrow transplant so we didn't agree with dominic right to do nothing when i

was a what we don't want no whatever we want tonight that we've tried everything for her life but you've gone just got home and neither there's something available and just think what if we had a child with done it now and i mean. they list doctors made a desperate plea to a biotech company in paris it was a long shot but dr andre shooting was ready god a call from the physician that we're creating and they said we have no solution and maybe this off the shelf prolog could be a solution why because this patient had not enough cells the next step in the fight against cancer is happening in the bar this one scientists here in paris a genetically manipulating t. cells essentially engineering them to become cancer fighting it's. later received a single dose of genetically engineered t. cells so we shipped the while there and that was the first time this new card

because the fourth problem for acute flown for the book was those in the ghosts of this young patient in just a few weeks she went into complete remission and jerry keeps us up late and i think that's already in the morning. yes it's not even started just magic the genetically engineered dace is in this vial it's a type of t. cell therapy called car therapy america antigen receptive therapy the proteins that give t. cells the ability to target human cells and that technique was invited inside this laboratory operated by the selectors company to get a close up view of how this gene editing works before us. protective gloves and. so this is the place where you can find a place it's a block cell the for being manipulating genetically to reprogram them from and to

become real cancer killing or happens head yes it is just the start the entire process would take seventeen days it begins with t. cells the company gets from me. so how is this different we cold it's target a pair targeted because we use molecules with a kind of a warhead that the tip these molecules have dialed and program and which are called antibodies it's like a rocket that can recognize. a cell. seeking missile finding the cancer cell that's exactly it so we can actually see the cells being growing hair in the flower yes and i like to let our tool centered on the so-called wafer. so here we have what's called the wave machine named for the gentle

motion of the machine designed to help. what happened in the body is totally different when the key cell gets inside the body it will recognize to become through the camera and to generate scepter it will start lifting the cancer cell the cell that would present for example see the nineteenth and then the t. cell will kill the cell but what it said gets inside the body here started the war against cancer sir here is where you have to. cancer fighting self yes we want to preserve the cancer potential as much as possible and keep them. alive sleep here. in turkey any interaction before do get into war so here where we just. exercise the bed don't take off my cap. martin jam exactly it's a it's a jam. and it was on to the most critical step in the process so what's happening

here it's a word a genetic thing will have some new load. put the thing ready you saw it floating electricity. it started and then the thing happened it still looks super simple i'm going to read it it happened it's very it's a microsecond the gene editing process happens on a microscopic level but looks like. a cool tannen's come the d.n.a. sequence to suppress such receptive. sounds can then be targeted for specific cancer so now what you have is the time of the impressions of the two sounds connected to now the action to get your reaction to the story now and during the next hour or two three hours all the genetic tangle have the trucks only for ninety percent of the cells will get the genetic thing not hundred percent. you can't nineteen later richards he had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

a our form of cancer. you caught one two three targets eight and out for acute myeloid leukemia don't marry cancer. so what do we have half so these are t. cells. and the cells are targeting a bicycle and they have been told so they were frozen and without them and so we can see the cells. wow many council soldiers and it's amazing to think that one of these tiny little sounds. counts. yeah when you see them actually under incredible. the idea behind this therapy is to make it viable for any patients because the t. cells are not specific to an individual after gene editing that should be no

rejection of. an uncertain revolutionary isn't a. trial i think that is the death only a revolution that is starting it's start of it and cancer but it's revolution going around it the results. be very promising as of october two thousand and sixteen which it's remains in remission the second young patient was given that . she has not been identified she is reportedly in remission. but the little girl and her family who were brave enough to. put this treatment first human tax is the one who talked to she remembers. very happy because she came ok now painted me. what was that like to be part of that first saw her on t.v. i think just like i was drawn like a pretty strong emotion in

a worldwide this is like the most beautiful thing i've ever done in my life and if it has to stop here well at least i've done something. to the world the innovation needs to be tested to find if there are confident that when it is i can secure could be a reality the technology i'm doctor should be for mara in paris be a next time. the centenarians of italy one hundred years old and counting when you told me that people like these and you receive these you thing that you want to be think a person of seventy five something about this area is helping young devotee of life i mean organic here it's not a trend here is what you have they don't have to miss here and although they're eating and smoking and so on them last secret techno this time on knowledge is iraq. business update brought to you by

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right. now. this is al jazeera. hello i'm adrian for again this is that he is our live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes myanmar's leader decides not to attend the u.n. general.