Hematological malignancies are treated with intensive high-dose chemotherapy, with or without radiation. This is followed by hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation (HSCT) to rescue or reconstitute hematopoiesis damaged by the anticancer therapy. Autologous HSC grafts may contain cancer cells and purging could further improve treatment outcomes. Similarly, allogeneic HSCT may be improved ...

Although various therapies are available to treat cancers, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, cancer has been the leading cause of death in Japan for the last 30 years, and new therapeutic modalities are urgently needed. As a new modality, there has recently been great interest in oncolytic virotherapy, with measles virus being a candidate virus expected to show strong antitumor...

Alpha virus M1 is an oncolytic virus that targets zinc-finger antiviral protein (ZAP)-defective cancer cells, and may be useful for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Most of HCC patients have hepatitis and need long-term antiviral medication. Thus, it is necessary to clarify whether anti-virus medicines influence oncolytic effect of M1. We examined the effect of drugs used to treat h...

The clinical management of cancer continues to be dominated by macroscopic surgical resection, radiotherapy, and cytotoxic drugs. The major challenge facing oncology is to achieve more selective, less toxic and effective methods of targeting disseminated tumors, a challenge oncolytic virotherapy may be well-placed to meet. Characterization of coxsackievirus A21 (CVA21) receptor-based mechanism ...

New therapies for metastatic breast cancer patients are urgently needed. The long-term survival rates remain unacceptably low for patients with recurrent disease or disseminated metastases. In addition, existing therapies often cause a variety of debilitating side effects that severely impact quality of life. Oncolytic viruses constitute a developing therapeutic modality in which interest conti...

BACKGROUND Herpes simplex type I (HSV)-based vectors have been used experimentally for suicide gene therapy, immunomodulatory gene delivery, and direct oncolytic therapy. The current study utilizes the novel concept of regional delivery of an oncolytic virus in combination with or serving as the helper virus for packaging herpes-based amplicon vectors carrying a cytokine transgene, with the goa...

Oncolytic virotherapy represents a novel therapeutic strategy in the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies. Oncolytic viruses, including genetically engineered and naturally occurring viruses, can selectively replicate in and induce tumor cell apoptosis without harming normal tissues, thus offering a promising tool in the armamentarium for cancer therapy. While this approach has garnered m...

Purpose and Experimental Design: Replication-compe-tent herpes simplex virus [HSV (oncolytic HSV)] holds con-siderable promise for treating malignant solid tumors, al-though the potency of the virus needs improvement if its fullclinical potential is to be realized. Incorporation of mem-brane fusion capability into an oncolytic HSV, either byscreening for a syncytial ...

Oncolytic viruses that selectively lyse tumor cells with minimal damage to normal cells are a new area of therapeutic development in oncology. An attenuated herpesvirus encoding the granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), known as talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC), has been identified as an attractive oncolytic virus for cancer therapy based on preclinical tumor studies and re...

Oncolytic virotherapy has recently emerged as a promising strategy for inducing tumor-specific cell death. Adenoviruses are widely and frequently used in oncolytic virotherapy. The mechanism of oncolytic adenovirus-mediated tumor suppression involves virus-induced activation of the autophagic machinery in tumor cells. Autophagy is a cytoprotective process that produces energy via lysosomal degr...