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Measles Virus Puts Woman's Cancer Into Remission
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."
This has to stop before it gets out of control
How we are going to give adults autism too.
So now the MMR vaccine causes cancer, as well as autism?
I know what happens now ... Vampires, end of world, bad acting, dead dogs and lots of dodgy special effect monsters.
And Emma Thompson. So not all bad ...
(R)ule in Hell or (S)erve in Heaven [R]?
Apart from all the misinformation being spread by the first half dozen anti-immunization posters, you did notice that these patients probably had otherwise incurable cancers, so any reasonable chance of a cure is worth taking.
Multiple myeloma is forever.
My father's fighting multiple myeloma. He beat it into remission once with a marrow treatment, and after 5 years (which is about par for the course), it came back. Enough chemo pills to bankrupt a horse later, he's teetering on the brink of remission #2, but likely going to be taking a prophylactic/maintenance dose of chemo drugs until the next time it comes out of remission - which might be the cycle he's on for the rest of his life (which we now measure in +-5 year blocks).
There's a certain point in the process at which a painful year of chemo treatments or inpatient marrow treatments gambling for a 5-year remission in a 70-year old becomes a losing proposition, but knowing you can possibly press the snooze button on cancer through normal methods enough times that perhaps, perhaps, just get your Super Measles! shot someday for your next 5-years snooze is promising.
Here's hoping.
"...when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
The neat thing about terminal cancer patients is that the answer is "Not much that would be worse than the alternative."
It's...very liberating.
..Wasn't this how the new I am Legend started?
The neat thing about terminal cancer patients is that the answer is "Not much that would be worse than the alternative."
Conversely, this high bar makes it very difficult to improve on invasive but adequate treatments. Consider mastectomy for early-stage breast cancer: it works pretty well, and that makes it damned near impossible to test any alternative treatment that might work just as well or better, and which would certainly be less invasive.
I worked on a cancer-therapy project once and had the clever idea of applying the technique we were using--which was aimed at something that was incurable at the time--to certain kinds of breast cancer, which was just similar enough to be an interesting candidate for the technique. I talked to a breast cancer researcher and he said, "That's a really clever idea. It sounds plausible. I can't do anything with it." And then explained the above reasoning.
This means that we tend to focus on treatments for currently untreatable cancers, and once we have something that is semi-OK, the rate of improvement goes way down. It doesn't go to zero, by any means, but the incentives shift in a way that is both perfectly logical and kind of perverse.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It's interesting that the treatment is hypothesized to have failed for people who already had measles antibodies. Perhaps the "extinct" viruses the CDC keeps around might be good for engineering future treatments.
Why the fuck would you engineer a virus from a virus that everyone has been immunized for? Which genius thought that was a good idea? Why not use a virus that the immune system has difficulty fighting off and won't be purged? Herpes perhaps?
(a) They selected patients for treatment who already had low levels of measles antibodies. (b) This is only one of a range of oncolytic viruses (including herpes visues) being investigated. (c) The virus could be further engineered so that antibodies to vaccine or wild type strains do not bind it. (d) Other strategies could be used to hide the virus from the immune system, including the use of 'carrier cells'.
Conversely, this high bar makes it very difficult to improve on invasive but adequate treatments. Consider mastectomy for early-stage breast cancer: it works pretty well, and that makes it damned near impossible to test any alternative treatment that might work just as well or better, and which would certainly be less invasive.
We already do. It's called "lumpectomy with sentinel node biopsy" for small enough tumors. No need to take off the entire breast.
I worked on a cancer-therapy project once and had the clever idea of applying the technique we were using--which was aimed at something that was incurable at the time--to certain kinds of breast cancer, which was just similar enough to be an interesting candidate for the technique. I talked to a breast cancer researcher and he said, "That's a really clever idea. It sounds plausible. I can't do anything with it." And then explained the above reasoning.
This means that we tend to focus on treatments for currently untreatable cancers, and once we have something that is semi-OK, the rate of improvement goes way down. It doesn't go to zero, by any means, but the incentives shift in a way that is both perfectly logical and kind of perverse.
What technique were you doing? Surgical? Medical?
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.
Blank until
I don't intend to sound rude so please try and take my question seriously: if the treatment is so bad and it doesn't help, isn't it better to choose not to be treated and just die of the disease? It seems to me that saves you a lot of agony.
-- Cheers!
This means that we tend to focus on treatments for currently untreatable cancers, and once we have something that is semi-OK, the rate of improvement goes way down. It doesn't go to zero, by any means, but the incentives shift in a way that is both perfectly logical and kind of perverse.
It's called the law of diminishing returns, and applies to nearly everything sadly