Prostate Cancer Treatment May Be Possible With Measles Vaccine

Research has found that a certain measles vaccine strain derivative may bring a ray of hope to the effectiveness of prostate cancer treatment.

Certain strains including the one known as MV-CEA is found to effectively infect, replicate in and kill prostate cancer cells.

With help of virotherapy, the researchers found, that the median survival time of MV-CEA-treated mice almost doubled, and complete tumour regression was observed in one-fifth of treated animals.

"Based on our preclinical results as well as the safety of measles derivatives in clinical trials against other tumour types, these viral strains could represent excellent candidates for clinical testing against advanced prostate cancer, including androgen resistant tumours," said Evanthia Galanis, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic, senior author of the study.

These strains of measles virus are used as therapeutic agents against cancer that demonstrates no cross-resistance with existing treatment approaches, and can therefore be combined with conventional treatment methods.

The virotherapy agent can easily be applied directly to the prostate tumour via ultrasound-guided needle injections and close monitoring of therapy can be achieved by non-invasive techniques including ultrasound and MRI.

This study is published in The Prostate.

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Source-ANI
TAN