Mayo Clinic update on Multiple Myeloma

New treatments are being used by Mayo Clinic doctors in Rochester, Minn. to treat patients with a type of cancer that affects 16,000 people annually.

Multiple Myeloma is a painful cancer originating in the marrow that destroys bone tissue.

The cancer doesn't have a cure yet, but it is treatable.

The Mayo Clinic is one of the premier Multiple Myeloma research centers in the world.

"Technically, it's a blood cancer," said Mayo Hematologist Dr. Angela Dispenzieri. "It's not contagious. It's not inherited."

Dispenzieri believes the cancer's mysteries lie somewhere within the DNA of mutant plasma blood cells.

Her research attempts to figure out why the cells multiply out of control, why they don't die off when they should.

This is well known: The cancerous cells simply don't play by the rules.

"They don't know enough to limit how much they grow and reproduce. They don't know enough to stay in their little place," said Dispenzieri. "They can spread to other parts of the bone marrow and cause difficulties for the patient."

Symptoms can include fatigue, impaired immunity, bone pain, and kidney problems.

One solution is to kill off a patient's bone marrow with toxic chemotherapy, thereby killing as many cancerous cells as possible.

The patient's own marrow seed cells are first harvested from the blood stream, then returned after the chemotherapy to give the bone marrow a fresh start.

It's a temporary benefit, but it may ease symptoms and add years of life to the patient.

Other treatments are also on the horizon. In Mayo's laboratories alone there are currently a dozen research projects underway.

After waiting nearly 30 years for the next drug treatment to become available, three compounds have shown benefit in clinical trials.

Even the measles virus is being harnessed for the fight. The virus naturally targets cancer cells. Dispenzieri showed a visitor high-tech scans of a mouse whose tumors have been shrunk with the modified measles assault.

"It basically infects the cell and then what it does is makes the cancer cells stick together," she explained. "That just basically destroys the cells."

The measles virus can also be attached to radioactive iodine, hopefully sending a killer blast of high-dose radiation straight into the cancer cells.

Dr. Dispenzieri expects to start testing the measles vaccine therapy on cancer patients this summer.

Source: CBS Broadcasting Inc.