Jennifer Matthews: Marilyn Cohn knows how to deal with a bad hand. Her doctor dealt her one she thought she wouldn't be able to beat.
Marilyn Cohn: He said, I had lung cancer, and right to my face, he said, 'You have one year to live.
Jennifer Matthews: Doctor Luis Raez gave her a second chance.
Luis E. Raez: When she came to us, the tumor had already spread.
Jennifer Matthews: Her only hope, a vaccine, never before tested in humans.
Marilyn Cohn: When you're told you have a year to live, you'll do anything.
Luis, E. Raez: We're trying to make your immune system aware that you have a lung cancer tumor inside, and we need to kill it, and you need to defend yourself.
Jennifer Matthews: To do that, doctors inject patients with a vaccine filled with lung cancer cells. It's the same theory used to fight the flu. The immune system is alerted of the foreign cells and kills them.
Luis E. Raez: Your immune system builds up an army of cells. It goes and fights the lung cancer tumor.
Jennifer Matthews: That army then seeks out lung cancer cells throughout the body and destroys them. 19 patients got the vaccine. One tumor shrunk and five others stopped growing, including Marilyn's.
Luis E. Raez: We stopped the tumor growing, but also, she has not progressed in that time.
Jennifer Matthews: After surviving eight years, she knows luck is on her side. This is Jennifer Matthews reporting.
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