Rochester doctor featured in new HBO documentary titled 'Killing Cancer'

(THE MED CITY BEAT) - A researcher from the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester is featured in a new VICE News documentary.

The film, titled "Killing Cancer," debuted Friday night on HBO.

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A documentary crew spent three days in town last October, according to a Mayo Clinic spokesperson. They followed two cancer patients undergoing oncolytic virus therapy, a type of treatment that uses HIV, measles and other viruses to infect and kill cancer cells while sparing normal, healthy tissues.

Dr. Stephen Russell, one of the developers of the revolutionary treatment, was interviewed for the film by VICE News founder and host Shane Smith. Russell and his team at Mayo are currently working on some of the world's most important advances in cancer medicine.

The exclusive in-depth special debuts Friday, February 27 at 10. The new season of Vice on HBO premieres March 6 at 11. Vice goes inside the world's most cutting-edge cancer research labs to follow the pioneering doctors and researchers who are changing the face of modern-day medicine and meet some of the cancer survivors who have already been saved by this revolutionary medical breakthrough.

Last May, the Mayo Clinic became the first institution in the world to prove the therapy can be effective against the deadly cancer multiple myeloma. The findings were first published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

“It’s a landmark,” Dr. Russell told the Star Tribune at the time. “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.”

While virotherapy drugs have not yet been approved in the U.S., they are already being used in some Asian countries.

Dr. Stephen Russell, the Richard O. Jacobson Professor of Molecular Medicine and a Consultant in Hematology from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, in an article appearing online ahead of print and in the July 2014 print issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, announces a breakthrough in cancer treatment where one infusion of an engineered measles virus therapy produced long-term and significant remission of drug refractory myeloma.

(Cover photo: The Med City Beat)