Measles vaccine shrinks tumours
The attenuated measles virus is a
promising anti-cancer agent.
20 June 2001
XAVIER BOSCH
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| Spot the difference: the
measels virus reduced tumours in mice |
| © SPL |
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The measles virus could help to treat a kind of cancer. US
researchers have found that, in mice at least, the attenuated
form of the virus, which has been used as a vaccine for the past
30 years, shrinks some tumours1. A
human trial of this new anti-cancer therapy has been approved.
Adele Fielding, of the Molecular Medicine Program at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues took cells from a
patient with fast-spreading Burkitt's lymphoma and from a
patient with more slowly growing follicular lymphoma. Injected
in mice, these cells grew into tumours of the lymphatic system -
the drainage arm of mammalian circulation.
Injecting the attenuated measles virus into these tumours,
slowed their growth considerably; in some cases the tumours even
shrank. The injections remained just as effective when
Fielding's team gave the mice large amounts of anti-measles
antibodies. This is an important consideration, as most adults
have antibodies against the measles virus, having had the
disease or been vaccinated against it.
Injecting the virus into the animals' blood also halted the
progression of large tumors from cells from the Burkitt's
lymphoma patient. Intravenous drug delivery is central to
treating lymphoma, for, being a disease of the circulatory
system, lymphoma cells diffuse to affect several organs and
tissues, including the spleen, bone marrow and liver.
A trial of the safety and toxicity of measles vaccine
injections has already been approved in a few patients with
lymph-node tumours. "We will be beginning with a low dose of
virus and stringent criteria for study enrolment," says
Fielding. She expects that the trial "will show this to be a
safe approach", allowing the researchers to proceed to phase I
dose-escalation studies.
Commending this study, Patrick Lee, who works on infectious
diseases at the University of Calgary in Canada, believes that,
"as more and more viruses from different virus families are
found to be targeting different types of cancer, there must be a
common feature within cancer cells that is being exploited by
all these viruses". Lee adds: "Identification of such a feature
would represent a major milestone in cancer and virus research." |
