three years later, he's cancer free. >> stephanie lipscomb. >> pelley: stephanie lipscomb wasn't supposedomb: how are you doing? >> pelley: three years later she's graduated from nursing school. do you think being a cancer survivor's going to make you a better nurse? >> lipscomb: oh, yeah. it already has. just because i've been... been a scared patient, and so i know and i loved it when nurses held my hand. so i like to be there and be there emotionally for them, too. >> pelley: and as nancy justice's tumor continues to shrink, it's now leaving room for her imagination to grow. nancy, months ago, when i met you for the first time, they were dripping the polio virus into your tumor. and you told me about some of the things that you were determined to see in the lives of these boys. >> nancy justice: exactly. >> pelley: and i wonder if you're at a place now where you can start making plans. >> nancy justice: oh definitely. i mean, that has... that's been what's kept me going. i will see them graduate college. i will see them get married. and i will have grandchildren, in that order. ( laugh

cancer. >> desjardins: maybe you just close an eye... >> pelley: it's been three years since stephanie lipscombatient to see her recurrent glioblastoma wiped out by polio. >> desjardins: problem with memory? >> lipscomb: no. >> desjardins: vision? >> lipscomb: no. >> pelley: she gets a checkup at duke every four months. >> lipscomb: hey! >> donna clegg: how are you? >> lipscomb: good. >> pelley: and she's become a celebrity to the new patients starting the polio trial. 60-year-old donna clegg, a social worker from idaho, will be patient number 14. >> clegg: we're going to do it! >> lipscomb: yes, high five. >> clegg: thank you. >> pelley: this was donna clegg before cancer. and this is how we found her last june-- puffy from the steroids they used to limit the swelling in her brain. like others in the trial, she'd had surgery, chemo, and radiation, but the glioblastoma came back and the polio virus was her last chance. >> clegg: i want to be able to live. so that's kind of how i feel that this is going to be my opportunity to have a full life. >> pelley: donna's polio infusion was three times m

in 2011, stephanie lipscomb was a nursing student with headaches.octor came in to say that she had this glioblastoma tumor the size of a tennis ball. >> looked at the nurse that was sitting there holding my hand, and i said, "i don't understand. what did he just say?" it was kind of hard for me to process. >> reporter: stephanie became the first of 22 patients to allow a modified polio virus to be dripped directly into her brain tumor. researchers are finding that the polio starts the killing, but it's the immune system awakened to the infection that wrecks the tumor. patient likes stephanie usually have months to live. but this is her m.r.i. last august. and there's no cancer in this picture at all. >> we don't see any cancer, active cancer cells in the tumor at all. >> reporter: dr. henry friedman is deputy director of duke's brain tumor center. i wonder of all the trials and all of the theories and all of the treatments that you have hoped for all of these years, how does does this stack up? >> this, to me, is the most promising therapy i have se