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The 50-year-old mother was picked for the trial because she had had limited previous exposure to measles and her immune system was very weak, meaning it would not be able to combat the massive onslaught of viral material contained in the therapy.

A second patient did not respond so well. The researcher suspects this was because she had a different cancer, with tumours located in her leg muscles.

The technique of oncolytic virology — using re-engineered viruses to fight cancer — is not new. It has a history dating back to the 1950s and is used for example as a first line of treatment in some forms of bladder cancer.

The viruses work by binding to tumours and using them as hosts to replicate their own genetic material. The cancer cells eventually explode and release the virus.

‘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’

The snag is the therapy can only be used once on a patient. Once the vaccine has been delivered, the body’s natural defences — the immune system — will recognize it and attack it before it can destroy the tumours.

The clinic is planning a bigger trial, which it hopes to have up and running by September.

Other researchers are hoping the technique can be adapted to combat different cancers.

It is likely that this method will one day become the standard for treatment of cancers such as myeloma or pancreatic cancer within the next three to four years, predicts Dr. Tanios Bekaii-Saab, a researcher at the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Ohio.

As for Ms. Erholtz, she is optimistic her cancer has been beaten.

“We don’t let the cancer cloud hang over our house,” she said. “Let’s put it that way or we would have lived in the dark the last 10 years.”

National Post news services