Oncolytic VirotherapyOncolytic virotherapy involves the treatment of cancer by using a virus specifically tailored to infect cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. The engineering of such viruses involves ensuring that the viruses can only replicate inside cancer cells, lysing the cells when they exit and ensuring a higher dosage at the site of the tumors.
Oncolytic virotherapy is a science still in its infancy. Only a few cancers have had this method of treatment applied to them, with varying success.
The most critical task in oncolytic virotherapy is ensuring the virus chooses the right cells to destroy. In transductional targeting, the virus’s protein coat is modified so that it targets cancer cells rather than non-cancerous cells; this has been used especially with adenoviruses. In non-transductional targeting, the virus can enter other cells, but has been genetically modified so that it can only reproduce inside the cancer cells. Cox-2, because its expression is elevated in many cancers, is used in non-transductional targeting to promote the reproduction of these viruses. Double-targeting viruses, using both transductional and non-transductional methods to target the virus, is the safest and most effective method for oncolytic virotherapy.
Tailored viruses can also be used for other purposes, like the delivery of suicide genes to cancer cells or inhibition of angiogenesis. The most critical barrier to the widespread use of this cancer treatment is the deactivation of the immune system, which quickly develops ways to destroy tailored viruses.
Web Resources On Oncolytic Virotherapy
Oncolytic virotherapy: a brief review
Future directions for the field of oncolytic virotherapy
Book Resources On Oncolytic VirotherapyAdvances in Viral Oncology: DNA-Virus Oncogenus and Their Actions by George Klein (Ed.)
Mechanisms of DNA Tumor Virus Transformation by Rosenthal & Doerr (Ed.)
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