drag2share: An Amazing Cancer Treatment Based On The Measles Virus Saved A Woman's LifeWhy the measles virus?If this didn't cure cancer, what did it do?What this means
After years of cancer treatments failed, Stacy Erholtz was out of options. So she let doctors at the Mayo Clinic infect her with a genetically engineered version of the measles virus.
As the virus spread through her blood stream it specifically attacked her cancer cells, shrinking tumors, putting her cancer in remission, and triggering a slew of headlines saying that measles cured her cancer and claiming that her cancer was "killed" or "destroyed."
Yes, it's an amazing story. It showed cancer can be treated with a virus but calling it a "cure for cancer" goes way too far. Nowhere in the study do the researchers claim that the woman's cancer was "cured."
Why the measles virus?
The idea isn't a new one. For decades, scientists have been researching how they could take viruses that target specific cells and use them to fight cancer by modifying them so they only infect and kill the rapidly spreading tumor cells and leave the healthy ones alone, according to Justin Kline, a blood cancer specialist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the research.
As the researchers point out in the study, this technique has been effective in mice and in treating tumors in one location, like a melanoma on the skin. But it hadn't been shown to work with a cancer that has spread, like multiple myeloma — which targets blood plasma cells in bone marrow in locations through! out the body.
The modified virus that the researchers chose — which is routinely administered to humans as a measles vaccine — was selected because it targets cells with a specific protein that is common in these myeloma cancer cells but not in healthy cells. That means the virus targets the cancer without making the person sick.
The two women in this study were both "at risk for imminent death" after other cancer treatments failed. That alone is a reason to try an experimental therapy, but there was another important factor at play: their own immune systems.
These women weren't immune to the measles virus like most of us are. That's lucky because doctors believe immunity would prevent the virus from gaining a foothold in the patient's system. The study doesn't say why they weren't immune — either they were never vaccinated in the first place or they might have lost their immunity due to cancer or a side effect of treatments they'd undergone, according to Kline. He says that people who receive chemo are usually later vaccinated again, since they can lose past immunity.
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