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Reuters Health
By Keith Mulvihill
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters Health) - A preliminary study in mice has found that a high dose of a vaccine made from genetically modified measles virus is very successful at killing brain tumor cells.
The findings suggest, the study author said, that the modified virus has potential for use in a clinical trial to treat brain cancer, but he added that its toxicity must be further evaluated before such a trial can take place.
Dr. Loi K. Phuong of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, presented the findings here Monday at the 52nd annual meeting of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
Previous research has demonstrated that a class of proteins called fusogenic membrane glycoproteins (FMGs) are very effective at killing glioblastoma cells, Phuong explained in an interview with Reuters Health. Glioblastoma is a deadly brain cancer that is notoriously resistant to surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, with more than half the patients dying less than one year after receiving their diagnosis.
Because FMGs are a natural component of the measles virus, Phuong and his team wanted to see what effects, if any, the measles virus had on human glioblastoma tumors transplanted into mice.
The researchers injected the modified measles virus directly into the tumors, at much higher doses than would be used for human vaccination purposes, and monitored the size of the tumors with MRI scans, explained Phuong.
After 72 hours, treated tumors had shrunk by more than 90%, and treated mice lived longer than those that received inactivated measles vaccine virus or no treatment at all, Phuong told attendees.
"The results are very promising," said Phuong, "I think there is good potential for this to turn into a clinical trial."
However, he noted that the group needs to further investigate the toxicity of the high dose of the measles vaccine.
"We need to look and see if direct inoculation of the virus into the brain has a similar safety profile of that seen with the vaccine," he added.
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