Doctors use '10 million person' measles vaccine dose to kill cancer

Stacy Erholtz was out of time.

A cancer of the blood called myeloma had spread throughout her body, defying every treatment.

That’s when doctors at the Mayo Clinic used a huge dose of the vaccine, enough to inoculate 10 million people.It killed the cancer.

"It's a landmark," said Dr. Stephen Russell.

It’s been more than six months since that treatment and the cancer is still in remission.

Russell told The Minneapolis Star Tribune, "we've known for a long time that we can give a virus intravenously and destroy metastatic cancer in mice.

Nobody’s shown that you can do that in people before."

That good news didn’t translate for everyone. Another patient treated with the same dose showed improvement, but not remission. Doctors agree larger scale tests need to continue.

KARE-11 reports those studies will look at how the vaccine affects other cancers as well.

Scientists promise to try other vaccines along the way, all in an effort to discover what is termed a “single-shot" cure.It's like a call to action," Russell proclaimed.

"It's not just good for our virus. It's good for every virus everybody's developing as a cancer therapy. We know this can happen."

Just last week, Doctors at Duke University announced success using polio to kill brain tumors.

More here.