It was recently reported that the Mayo Clinic has successfully used the measles vaccine to eliminate cancer in a patient enrolled in an experimental trial. The patient, 50-year-old Stacy Erholtz, was suffering from blood cancer, which had spread widely throughout her body, when she resorted to a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic last June.
Erholtz’s cancer went into remission and became undetectable following a single, massive dose of the measles vaccine. Erholtz was injected with 100 billion infectious units of the measles virus. A typical dose contains only 10,000 infectious units of the virus. The virus works by attaching itself to tumors in the body and using them as hosts for replication, which eventually kills the cancer cells.
A similar experiment using the measles virus to treat mesothelioma is currently being conducted in a clinical trial by Dr. Tobias Peikert of the Mayo Clinic. The clinical trial uses the measles virus to attack mesothelioma cells in patients with pleural mesothelioma regardless of whether they have undergone prior therapy.
Dr. Peikert is using the same measles virus (MV-NIS) in his clinical trial that was used for Stacy Erholtz. Rather than an intravenous injection, however, patients in Dr. Peikert’s trial have the virus delivered into the pleural cavity. The dose used in the trial is also lower than that used for Erholtz.
“This is extremely exciting,” Dr. Peikert said in response to the successful use of the measles virus for Erholtz. “It is very encouraging to see a convincing clinical response to the virus, although one has to caution that thus far this represents a single case.” Dr. Peikert believes the dose of the virus will likely matter as future measles studies for mesothelioma are conducted.
The Meso Foundation held a previous Meet the Mesothelioma Experts podcast session with Dr. Tobias Peikert to discuss his measles virus clinical trial. You can listen to the session below.
Additionally, a video of Dr. Peikert’s panel from the International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma can be viewed here.
Listen to more Meet the Mesothelioma Experts podcasts at curemeso.org/experts and check back for information about upcoming sessions.
