Viral Nanoparticles: Cancer Vaccines and Immune Modulators.

Viral Nanoparticles: Cancer Vaccines and Immune Modulators.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2021;1295:317-325
Authors: Fusciello M, Ylösmäki E, Cerullo V
Abstract
In the last decades, viruses have gained great interest in the field of immuno-oncology (I-O) for their ability of interacting both with the immune system and the tumour microenvironment. Those pathogens have naturally evolved and been evolutionary to specifically infect hosts, replicate, deliver their genome, and spread. These properties, initially considered a disadvantage, have been investigated and edited to turn viruses into precious allies for molecular biology serving as gene therapy vectors, adjuvants for the immune system, drug cargos, and, lately, anticancer therapeutics. As anticancer drug, one interesting option is viral engineering. Modification of either the viral genome or the outer shell of viruses can change infectivity and tissue targeting and add new functions to the viral particle. Remarkably, in the field of cancer virotherapy, scientists realized that a specific viral genomic depletion would turn the normal tropism of viruses to conditionally replicate in cancer cells only. This category of viruses, named 'Oncolytic viruses', have been investigated and used for cancer treatment in the past decades resulting in the approval of the first oncolytic virus, a herpes simplex virus expressing a stimulating factor, named T-Vec, in 2015. As such, oncolytic viruses achieved...

Source: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology - February 7, 2021 Category: Research Tags: Adv Exp Med Biol Source Type: research