Oncolytic Viral Therapy and Cancer Treatment Methods in Oncology

 Oncolytic Viral Therapy and Cancer Treatment Methods in Oncology

Cancer is one of the major causes of death worldwide. It can be defined as a disease in which groups of abnormal cells grow uncontrollably by disregarding the normal rules of cell division. According to a 2019 report of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) [71], eighteen million new are diagnosed annually causing almost 10 million deaths. There has been considerable development in the prevention and diagnosis of cancer, but the incidence and mortality still need reduction. Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, hormonal therapies, targeted therapies or radiation therapy, deliver limited long lasting responses in a vast majority of patients with advanced cancers. Over the past few decades, immunotherapy has become an effective therapeutic option against multiple malignancies. The therapy activates and harnesses patients’ own immune system to destroy cancer cells [16, 64]. It includes several different modalities, such as adoptive cell transfer (ACT), monoclonal antibodies, cancer vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors and oncolytic virus therapy (OVT) [16, 64]. OVT is regarded as a potential breakthrough in cancer treatment following the success of immune checkpoint inhibitors [30, 37, 64]. Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) is a cancer immunotherapy by selecting and expanding patients’ own tumor-specific T cells in vitro and then reinfusing them back into patients to boost the patients’ own immune ability to target cancer [78].Ovs are defined as genetically engineered or naturally occurring viruses that selectively replicate in and kill cancer cells without harming normal tissues [30, 64]. The therapy takes advantage of the oncolytic nature of the viruses to replicate inside the infected cells and spread between tumor cells with the goal to eradicate tumor cells [30, 37, 64]. The viruses offer a new immunotherapeutic approach for the treatment of tumors [93]. The anti-tumor effect of OVs comes in two ways. They can directly infect and lyse tumor cells, or by stimulating the immune system can generate an immune attack [67]. OVs can infect tumor tissue efficiently without damaging normal tissue [23]. Oncolytic viruses can boost the immune system by activating antibodies, cytokines and co-stimulatory molecules to reverse the immunosuppressive tumor microenviron1

 

Rohana Vithanage (PhD)

Department of Mathematical Sciences,

Wayamba University of Sri Lanka.

2022  

rohanav@wyb.ac.lk