Hello all,

I hope you enjoying the sun, just make sure you use cream. Things are going well. I am currently in the process of buying a house (fingers crossed) and I’m feeling pretty good.

One of my friends, Nick, was kind enough to send me a summary of some unusual research that has been carried out to try and combat Blood cancer. Surprisingly I am both interested quite pro this form of R and D. It is also something I have not written about in my blog.

The more traditional treatments I have covered and I have read a lot up on Rituximab.(https://spleniclymphoma.com/2014/03/12/new-research-since-i-was-diagnosed/) . I also had a useful comment by Bob Livings, who said Obinutuzumab.(an offshoot of this) was looking good.

What I wanted to talk about is a more recent research piece, which came out three days ago.

This particular article http://mashable.com/2014/05/15/measles-vaccine-fight-cancer/ is from the Mayo clinic, a fairly well known medical establishment who carry out research. You can read it on the link but the basic summary is

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have completed a groundbreaking new test: They knocked widespread blood cancer into remission with a single massive blast of measles vaccine.

What they did was give a patient with advanced blood cancer a much larger than normal measles vaccine. Those unfamiliar with how a vaccine work, it basically injects the patient with a bacteria closely resembling a dangerous disease. It then allows the body to produce antibodies to this, after it works out what it is, that then fight against the more dangerous strain. A good example of this is cow pox being used to vaccinate against small pox, a disease now eradicated to the point people no longer need vaccines against it.

What this one does though is slightly different. It injects 100 billion infectious units (opposed to the standard 10000). These swamp the body and start to breed. They use the white blood cells as hosts and use them to multiply, killing them in the process. The reason you need so much of the material is that you want to give a massive dose, wiping out nearly all of the white cells.

After this you’re body then develops antibodies to remove the viral material, and learnt how to fight it. The process though kills the cancer cells and resets you. This doesn’t cure you, but means you effectively start the clock of cell growth starting again.

They have previously tried this with Mice, but this was the first human trial. It was only carried out on two people but was extremely successful on one, Stacy Erholtz, improving their condition drastically. The other one did not improve though, so as always the larger trial is where this will be tested.

Larger trials will begin in September.

Interesting stuff though and good to see people aren’t standing still on advances.

In other news I have an event in London being held on Thursday the 29th of May. http://www.eventbrite.com/e/business-networking-with-guest-speaker-jason-choy-tickets-11464834629?aff=efblike Its networking but the proceeds go to the Lymphoma Association, so please sign up if you can make it.

So far with the books sold http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robert-Mr-Marcus-Evans/dp/1495975606/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1400506788&sr=8-2&keywords=robert) and attendees signed up that’s over £1000 raised, so its looking good.

Thank you for your support and let me know what you think of the trial.