Virotherapy (viruses)

Oncolytic Virotherapy

The treatment of cancer by using a virus specifically tailored to infect cancer cells
while leaving normal cells unharmed.

New Castles Disease Virus (ndv): Used to destroy cancer cells.

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. There are naturally occurring Oncolytic Viruses & engineered Oncolytic Viruses in Clinical Trials.

Virotherapy uses viruses that specifically replicate in cancer cells and destroy them. Preclinical and animal studies have demonstrated that oncolytic viruses (link to wiki) can infect a variety of cancer cells and kill them without affecting the healthy cells.
The advantage of virotherapy is that viruses are self-replicating and administration of one dose can infect a large number of cancer cells.

Viruses that successfully infect cells and kill them during their replication have given researchers the idea to use oncolytic viruses (link to wiki) to specifically kill cancer cells. This technique, known as virotherapy, has been evaluated in clinical trials for several decades.

One advantage in using an oncolytic virus to destroy cancer cells is that the virus, when it specifically infects the tumor cells, multiplies in the cells and spreads the virus throughout the tumor mass, thus overcoming the delivery problem of gene therapy (link to wiki).

(Reference: Oncolytic Virus Lecture: Natl Biotechnol. 22:70-77, 2004; Tseng JC, Levin B, Hurtado A, Yee H, Perez de Castro I, Jimenez M, Shamamian P, Jin R, Novick RP, Pellicer A, Meruelo D)

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Dr David Kirn on developments in oncolytic virotherapy for cancer: Video:

Virotherapy for cancer: Current status, hurdles, and future directions: