Woman Whose Cancer Had Spread Throughout Her Body Cured by Engineered Measles Virus Loaded with Radioactive Cancer-Killers

This isn't the first time viruses have been deployed against cancer, but they say it's the first time a patient suffering from cancer throughout her body has been cured this way.

I don't know if "cured" is the right term; but her cancers are in remission.

[As] part of a two-patient clinical trial, doctors at the Mayo Clinic injected Erholtz with 100 billion units of the measles virus – enough to inoculate 10 million people.

Her doctor said they were entering the unknown.

Five minutes into the hour-long process, Erholtz got a terrible headache. Two hours later, she started shaking and vomiting. Her temperature hit 105 degrees, Stephen Russell, the lead researcher on the case, told The Washington Post early Thursday morning.

“Thirty-six hours after the virus infusion was finished, she told me, ‘Evan has started shrinking,’” Russell said. Over the next several weeks, the tumor on her forehead disappeared completely and, over time, the other tumors in her body did, too.

The virus is engineered to bond to the surface of cancer cells and then inject the cells with its deadly payload. But as the radioactive material that each virus cell carries is on the molecular scale, it's does very limited amounts of damage to neighboring healthy cells.

posted by Ace at 04:51 PM

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