Critical analysis of an oncolytic herpesvirus encoding granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor for the treatment of malignant melanoma

Immune System, Friend or Foe of Oncolytic Virotherapy?

Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are an emerging class of targeted anticancer therapies designed to selectively infect, replicate in, and lyse malignant cells without causing harm to normal, healthy tissues. In addition to direct oncolytic activity, OVs have shown dual promise as immunotherapeutic agents. The presence of viral infection and subsequently generated immunogenic tumor cell death trigger inn...

Comparison of T7- and Lac-Based Systems for the Periplasmic Expression of Human Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor in Escherichia coli

Treatment of melanoma with a serotype 5/3 chimeric oncolytic adenovirus coding for GM-CSF: Results in vitro, in rodents and in humans.

Metastatic melanoma is refractory to irradiation and chemotherapy, but amenable to immunological approaches such as immune-checkpoint-inhibiting antibodies or adoptive cell therapies. Oncolytic virus replication is an immunogenic phenomenon, and viruses can be armed with immunostimulatory molecules. Therefore, oncolytic immuno-virotherapy of malignant melanoma is an appealing approach, which wa...

Optimizing Dendritic Cell Preparation for Fusion with Melanoma Cells

Background: Fusion of dendritic cells (DCs) with melanoma cells could reinforce the antigenicity of tumors as a strategy for the treatment of malignant melanoma. However, the insufficient quantity of DCs and the low fusion efficiency limits the development of such approach. Objective: To define the dosage of the stimulating factors as well as the induction condition for the optimal DCs prepara...

Expression and Secretion of Human Granulocyte Macrophage-Colony Stimulating Factor Using Escherichia coli Enterotoxin I Signal Sequence

With the aim of the secretion of human granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (hGM-CSF) in Escherichia coli, hGM-CSF cDNA was fused in-frame next to the signal sequence of ST toxin (ST-I) of exteroxigenic E. coli, containing 53 or 19 amino acids of signal peptide. The fused STsig::hGM-CSF coding fragments were inserted into a T7-based expression plasmid. The recombinant plasmids were ...