Mayo Clinic trial: Massive blast of measles vaccine wipes out cancer

[jimmy olsen]

Awesome news!

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/259155541.html

Mayo Clinic trial: Massive blast of measles vaccine wipes out cancer

    Article by: DAN BROWNING , Star Tribune
    Updated: May 14, 2014 - 8:03 AM

Mayo Clinic's blitzkrieg approach to overwhelm tumors virally will get more study

Stacy Erholtz was out of conventional treatment options for blood cancer last June when she underwent an experimental trial at the Mayo Clinic that injected her with enough measles vaccine to inoculate 10 million people.

The 50-year-old Pequot Lakes mother is now part of medical history.

The cancer, which had spread widely through her body, went into complete remission and was undetectable in Erholtz's body after just one dose of the measles vaccine, which has an uncanny affinity for certain kinds of tumors.

Erholtz was one of just two subjects in the experiment and the only one to achieve complete remission. But the experiment provides the "proof of concept" that a single, massive dose of intravenous viral therapy can kill cancer by overwhelming its natural defenses, according to Dr. Stephen Russell, a professor of molecular medicine who spearheaded the research at Mayo.

"It's a landmark," Russell said in an interview last week. "We've known for a long time that we can give a virus intravenously and destroy metastatic cancer in mice. Nobody's shown that you can do that in people before."

Until now.

The research, published online Wednesday in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, represents a "benchmark to strive for and improve upon," according to an accompanying editorial by Dr. John C. Bell of the Centre for Innovative Cancer Research in Ottawa.

"Without trying to hype it too much, it is a very significant discovery," Bell said in an interview.

The next step is a bigger trial to see if the measles blitzkrieg works in a larger number of patients — a trial that Mayo expects to launch no later than September.

Cancer killers

Researchers have known for decades that viruses can be used to destroy cancer. They bind to tumors and use them as hosts to replicate their own genetic material; the cancer cells eventually explode and release the virus. Antiviral vaccines that have been rendered safe can produce the same effects and can also be modified to carry radioactive molecules to help destroy cancer cells without causing widespread damage to healthy cells around the tumors. The body's immune system then attacks any remaining cancer that carries remnants of the vaccine's genetic imprint.

Researchers worldwide are working with a variety of cancer-killing viruses, including herpes and poxvirus, and they have produced long-lasting cures in rodent studies, Bell noted in his editorial. "Many have been tried in humans but no one has shown this type of systemic activity [seen in the Mayo study]," he said.

The Mayo research could also help solve a related puzzle. Researchers have suspected for some time that there is a threshold level of virus that is required to defeat the defense mechanisms in cancerous tumors, Bell said, and the Mayo study helps set the bar.

In addition, various viruses show an affinity for particular organs, Russell said. Pneumonia and influenza, for example, damage the lungs. Hepatitis damages the liver.

"We have a virus that can do that selectively to a tumor without at the same time causing damage to normal tissues in the body," Russell said.

Massive dose

The strain that Russell used was isolated in 1954 from the throat of an 11-year-old boy named David Edmonston and has been used to safely make all of the measles vaccines used in the West, he said. The virus treats multiple myeloma tumors as food and turns them into machines to make copies of itself.

Most people have been inoculated with the vaccine, rendering it vulnerable to their immune systems. But patients with multiple myeloma often have suppressed immune systems, which can allow the virus to do its work.

The normal dose of vaccine contains 10,000 infectious units of the measles virus, Russell said. Mayo started out giving patients 1 million infectious units and gradually cranked up the dosage — but it didn't work until Erholtz and another patient were injected with 100 billion infectious units, he said.

While the treatment worked in Erholtz, whose tumors were primarily in her bone marrow, the results weren't sustained in the second patient, whose tumors were largely confined to her leg muscles. Russell said researchers need to study how the nature of the tumor affects the lethality of the virus.

"I think if we had been able to give bigger dose, we might have got a better outcome in that second patient," he said.

But at least for now, there's no second chance. Once the vaccine has been delivered, the body's immune system will recognize it and attack it. Russell said breaking down the immune system before the treatment will be part of another upcoming clinical trial.

Researchers also may be able to bypass the immune system by taking a patient's cells and converting them into Trojan horses. The virus is loaded into the cells, and they are injected back into the bloodstream. "That way it doesn't get destroyed before it reaches its target," Russell said.

Close to success

At the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Ohio, Dr. Tanios Bekaii-Saab is working on a study to treat pancreatic cancer using Reolysin, a proprietary variant of the virus that causes the common cold.

Researchers, he said, have two primary approaches: Inject the virus directly into tumors to get past their defenses or inject it into the bloodstream and hope it will seek out tumors and overwhelm them, as was done in the Mayo study.

Saab said he expects one of these virus "platforms" is likely to become standard treatment for a cancer such as myeloma or pancreatic cancer within three to four years.

After reading a draft of the Mayo study, Saab called it "an incredibly innovative way to actually attack the cancer and perhaps even offer a better chance at complete remission," especially in combination with radioactive molecules and immune system therapy.

He cautioned that the study still must be confirmed in large randomized clinical trials — the point where many hopes get dashed.

"Unless we get to the third stage of development, we are only cautiously optimistic," Saab said.

For her part, Erholtz has no regrets about participating in the study and remains optimistic that she will remain cancer-free at her annual checkup next month in Rochester.

"We don't let the cancer cloud hang over our house, let's put it that way, or we would have lived in the dark the last 10 years," Erholtz said.

[CountDeMoney]

Measles is actually a very interesting and extremely flexible pathogen;  there's some positive studies going on as to whether it provides the kind of nucleic envelope needed to zap HIV cells.

[Viking]

Measles is actually a very interesting and extremely flexible pathogen;  there's some positive studies going on as to whether it provides the kind of nucleic envelope needed to zap HIV cells.

HIV doesn't have "cells" it infects cells.


As for the OP

Journalists really shouldn't write headlines. This one seems ripe to feed anti-vaxxer delusions. Vaccine here is merely a delivery mechanism for "measles" - presumably a live vaccine version - at which point "massive" means it is no longer a vaccine and is merely a measles infection. To the best of my knowledge this is an analogy to Chemotherapy where the role of chemical poison is replaced by a infectious virus.

[grumbler]

Must suck to be that second patient; had he or she not been in this round of experiments, he or she could have been part of the second round, where even higher dosages will be used, and which may have been enough to cure him or her.  As it stands, he or she just knows that they were on the wrong side of the 50-50 coin toss.

[CountDeMoney]

Measles is actually a very interesting and extremely flexible pathogen;  there's some positive studies going on as to whether it provides the kind of nucleic envelope needed to zap HIV cells.

HIV doesn't have "cells" it infects cells.

Fine, subtract "cells" from the end of the sentence.

[sbr]

Aren't viruses made up of cells?

[frunk]

Aren't viruses made up of cells?

Viruses are bits of RNA/DNA wrapped in protein that invade cells in order to replicate.

[sbr]

So that's a no .... ?

[jimmy olsen]

So that's a no .... ?

Yes, they are not cells. Just genetic material in a protein.

[CountDeMoney]

Clips are not magazines.

[Viking]

So that's a no .... ?

That is a no



Viruses are to Cells what Aliens are to John Hurt (in Alien). This is why viruses are so hard to deal with, they are not dependent on process, they can float about he body doing nothing for a long time and the can mutate quite significantly each time they infect cells.

[Admiral Yi]

Bastards

[Fate]

Cool, but it's one patient... so who knows. Get excited when there's a randomized control trial showing this technique to be effective. As it stands this article was published prematurely. But I guess science writers need to make a paycheck somehow.

[garbon]

Article makes it pretty clear that it was just one person and it could fail in clinical trials.

[The Brain]

Aren't viruses made up of cells?

STEM plz.