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Found this whilst randomly searching the internets.

http://kickerdaily.com/measles-vaccine-heals-cancer-patient-in-mayo-clinic-trial/

As End of life care is a part of my day to day job, I found this fascinating. The idea that you could target Cancer cells with specific types of virus is, frankly, incredible.

What do you guys think? Any validity to these claims? Or was this lady just lucky?

I would think that a mega dose of vaccine could kickstart the immune system to attack cells. I'm not sure exactly how this worked as described... But thinking further... (pulling molecular biology, immunology and virology classes out of the deep files of memory.... calculating)

This is all just based on the link. I haven't looked at anything else, yet. So, for how it could have worked:

Viruses are extremely specific (mentioned in the link). The virus has to have receptors which bind exactly to proteins on the surface of the cell. So, we must assume that the cancerous cells are targeted by the MMR vaccine. This isn't as obvious as it sounds. Think of all the different tissues in the body. All have some of the same surface proteins, but also have just different ratios of others, as well as unique surface proteins (for most cells IIRC). ETA - removed. can't say it clearly so best to leave it out!

There is a mechanism where cells, when infected by a virus, actually present viral proteins on their surface. This triggers the immune system to initiate apoptosis in the cell that presents. Did the virus particles (whether attenuated and therefore non-pathogenic) or the virus parts (if its not a whole virus) get taken in by the target cells, then get presented? Or did they just bind on and get the cell killed? I know, the link talked in general about viruses and such, but it was general. I didn't see enough to say how it worked in this situation. That was a tricky bit of writing in the link.

I guess one of the things I wonder about is how did a mega-dose of vaccine only hit the cancer cells and not wipe out or severely damage the other cells with the same receptor. Dunno. Cancer cells are already at risk of immune system defenses, so did this work with the anti-cancer immune system stuff? Guess I'll have to read the paper tomorrow!

Is it possible? Seems legit. I mean, they had to get it by an IRB (Institutional Review Board), so had to have a plausible hypothesis. But my concern would be that the test group is so freaking small... did they rule out spontaneous remission? False negative on followup diagnostic? Will they still count it as a cure if the cancer comes back? After how long? Not sure. It is really interesting, though.

Edit- grammar and stuff.

In some cases cancer cells (to a virus) are no different from other cells. The virus attacks them. Several studies like the above even suggest some viruses prefer to attack cancer cells. Granted its not necessarily better for the sick person. Hepatitis has been suggested to attack cancer, but it's still freakin Hepatitis.

Freaking chemo treatment I would not even wish on a Insurgent

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:

What do you guys think? Any validity to these claims? Or was this lady just lucky?

There is a lot of ongoing research into 'magic bullets', treatments that only work on cancer cells and leaves healthy cells alone, and viruses have been obvious candidates. Cancer cells can have all kinds of variant cell markers, nutrient requirements etc which can make them targetable over healthy cells. The problem is that there is no such thing as a 'cancer cell', there are nearly countless variations so what will work on one patient will not necessarily work on another, even with the 'same' cancer.

Diseases have been used to treat other diseases before, before antibiotics the only effective cure of syphilis was deliberate infection with malaria.

My girlfriend says no (she does cancer biology). She says that whilst some evidence has shown that viruses do work against some tumours and that they can reduce the size of the tumour, no cures have been documented. Also clinically you cannot use it more than once due to the body gaining an immunity to the virus. The virus could then effect the patient who is probably weak already from trying to fight cancer.

It has promise. Virus reproduction does revolve around altering the DNA of the cell, so it is possible that we could engineer a virus to "fix" cells to cure cancer.

The problem is that such a cure would require some very complicated alteration to make work, and IIRC you'd need to engineer a different virus for each patient. Unless you go for the Virus to attack the cancerous cells instead of fixing them.

The idea I like is what I call... Blinging da Cancer cells, then zapping them with low radiation.

http://scitechdaily.com/gold-plated-nanoparticles-seek-destroy-cancer-cells/