Measles Virus Puts Woman's Cancer Into Remission 74
clm1970 sends news that researchers from Mayo Clinic have successfully put a patient's cancer into remission using a modified measles virus. The researchers are quick to note that further trials are needed to determine whether these results are repeatable. Here are the two academic papers.
"Multiple myeloma in a 49-year-old woman seemed to disappear after she received an extremely high-dose injection of a measles virus engineered to kill the cancer cells. Multiple myeloma affects immune cells called plasma cells, which concentrate in the soft tissue, or marrow, inside bones. A second woman also with multiple myeloma began responding to the therapy, but her cancer eventually returned. Four other patients who received the high-dose therapy had no response. .. [Dr. Stephen Russell] and colleagues believe the two women who showed some response had few or no circulating measles antibodies, which might eliminate the engineered virus before it has a chance to kill the cancer cells. The therapy will now enter a mid-stage trial to see whether more patients with low circulating antibodies respond to high-doses of the virus, he said."
FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Measles? (Score:4, Informative)
Answers: ...or being transmitted by the patient for the rest of their life.
1) Because if it escapes into the wild there's minimal chance of spreading with unforeseen (except possibly by Richard Matheson) consequences.
2) Someone who undoubtedly understands contagious disease control better than you and has to answer to a safety and ethics committee, which also undoubtedly understands contagious disease control better than you.
3) Because maybe you don't want it hanging around and moving on to other tissues after it's dealt with the target cancer...
4)
So a relatively harmless and not easily transmissible virus is the best choice for this experiment, even if it isn't the best choice for the individual patients involved.