Therapeutic teamwork: Coupling oncolytic viruses with immunotherapy to destroy tumor cells

This article was written for extra credit by a student in my recently concluded virology course. by Nayan Lamba A recent study by scientists at the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy offers a new, multifaceted therapy for destroying tumors. A team of researchers led by Dmitriy Zamarin combined checkpoint blockade, a technique aimed at enhancing antitumor immune responses, with oncolytic viral therapy, a technique that uses viruses to kill tumor cells. By employing the two immunotherapies together, the researchers had more success in destroying tumor cells than they have had while investigating each therapy independently. While checkpoint blockade has been effective as a therapy against some tumors, its major drawback seems to be an inability to destroy strongly immunosuppressing tumors that evade immune system detection. While many oncolytic viruses have also had success as antitumor agents, their impact thus far has been limited to locally restricted tumors. Scientists major concern about oncolytic viruses has thus been whether they must be injected at all possible tumor sites in order to combat metastatic tumors. In an innovative approach aimed at overcoming the weaknesses of the two independent therapies, Zamarin and his team were able to destroy previously resistant tumor cells. The researchers initially injected mice with melanoma tumor cells, followed by injection of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) directly into these tumor sites. Newcastle disease virus is an avian ...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Basic virology Information antitumor checkpoint blockade melanoma Newcastle disease virus oncolytic viral therapy Source Type: blogs