Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are emerging as promising and potential anti-cancer therapeutic agents, not only able to kill cancer cells directly by selective intracellular viral replication, but also promote an immune response against tumor. Unfortunately, the bioavailability under systemic administration of OVs is limited because undesired inactivation caused host system neutralizing antibodies in ...

Oncolytic virotherapy is a growing treatment modality that uses replicating viruses as selective antineoplastic agents. Safety and efficacy considerations dictate that an ideal oncolytic agent would discriminate between normal and cancer cells on the basis of common genetic abnormalities in human cancers. Here, we identify a naturally occurring alphavirus (M1) as a novel selective killer target...

Since the 1990s, oncolytic viruses were utilized to treat cancer patients from phase I to phase III. Oncolytic virus development in China has been keeping in step with that in other countries and even accelerated the process in some fields, especially in conducting clinical trials. H101 is one kind of oncolytic adenovirus with E1B-55KD and partial E3 deleted developed by Shanghai Sunwaybio. Fro...

Oncolytic viruses are currently established as a novel type of immunotherapy. The challenge is to safely target oncolytic viruses to tumors. Previously, we have generated influenza A viruses (IAVs) containing deletions in the viral interferon antagonist. Those deletions have attenuated the virus in normal tissue but allowed replication in tumor cells. IAV entry is mediated by hemagglutinin (HA)...

The therapeutic use of viruses against cancer has been revived during the last two decades. Oncolytic viruses replicate and spread inside tumors, amplifying their cytotoxicity and simultaneously reversing the tumor immune suppression. Among different viruses, recombinant adenoviruses designed to replicate selectively in tumor cells have been clinically tested by intratumoral or systemic adminis...

The standard approach to treating patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) after primary debulking surgery remains taxane and platinum-based chemotherapy. Despite treatment with this strategy, the vast majority of patients relapse and develop drug-resistant metastatic disease that may be driven by cancer stem cells (CSCs) or cancer initiating cells (CICs). Oncolytic viruses circum...

Autophagy is a catabolic process that produces energy through lysosomal degradation of intracellular organelles. Autophagy functions as a cytoprotective factor under physiological conditions such as nutrient deprivation, hypoxia, and interruption of growth factors. On the other hand, infection with pathogenic viruses and bacteria also induces autophagy in infected cells. Oncolytic virotherapy w...

In addition to modulating the function and stability of cellular mRNAs, microRNAs can profoundly affect the life cycles of viruses bearing sequence complementary targets, a finding recently exploited to ameliorate toxicities of vaccines and oncolytic viruses. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying microRNA-mediated antiviral activity, we modified the 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) of Coxsackiev...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are defined as rare populations of tumor-initiating cancer cells that are capable of both self-renewal and differentiation. Extensive research is currently underway to develop therapeutics that target CSCs for cancer therapy, due to their critical role in tumorigenesis, as well as their resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. To this end, oncolytic viruses targetin...

The hybrid oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-FH) deleted for its G glycoprotein and displaying the measles virus (MV) envelope glycoproteins (hemagglutinin H and fusion F) is fusogenic, infects cells via any of the three MV receptors and has potent oncolytic activity against subcutaneous and disseminated myeloma tumors. To tailor VSV-FH as an oncolytic virus for ovarian cancer, we ablat...