Stacy Erholtz was nearly out of options when she enrolled in a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic. The Washington Post reports that, at 50 years of age, Erholtz was dying from myeloma. She had already been through rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants that had failed and now had tumors growing all over her body. This clinical trial was her Hail Mary.

Erholtz and another patient were the only subjects in a two-patient clinical trial. She was injected with 100 billion units of the measles virus. The same content would have been used to vaccinate 10 million people. The initial reaction was painful. Within five minutes she had a terrible headache. A couple of hours later she was shaking and vomiting before her temperature went up to 105 degrees.

Then, the miraculous recovery began. In 36 hours, a tumor on her forehead that was pressing on her brain started shrinking. Over the next few weeks, the tumor, and others in her body, disappeared completely. Erholtz is now in remission. The other patient in her clinical trial was not so lucky. The tumors were primarily in her leg muscles and the virus infusion did not work.

The full report of the small study has been published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. It details the use of an oncolytic virus, which is a virus reengineered for fighting diseases. There have been studies that have shown promise for viruses to destroy one or more tumors, either directly or by triggering an immune response in the body that fights cancer. Of course, a larger trial is needed to flesh out this new frontier for cancer treatment. Until that happens, these results are preliminary, at best.