PURPOSE Reovirus is a naturally occurring oncolytic virus in clinical trials. Although tumor infection by reovirus can generate adaptive antitumor immunity, its therapeutic importance versus direct viral oncolysis is undefined. This study addresses the requirement for viral oncolysis and replication, and the relative importance of antitumor immunity and direct oncolysis in therapy. EXPERIMENT...

Reovirus, a double-stranded RNA virus, can infect many types of cancer cells and cause oncolysis. Mammalian reovirus has exhibited promising anticancer activity in clinical trials and holds great advantages and promise as an anticancer agent. Reovirus is not associated with any serious human diseases, naturally targets and destroys tumors, and lacks the DNA synthesis stage, thus avoiding potent...

Viral oncolysis, the destruction of cancer cells by replicating viruses, is under clinical investigation for cancer therapy. Lytic viral replication in cancer cells both destroys the cells and liberates progeny virion to infect adjacent cancer cells. The safety and efficacy of this approach are dependent on selective and robust viral replication in cancer cells rather than in normal cells. Meth...

Exploiting the lytic life cycle of viruses has gained recent attention as an anticancer strategy (oncolysis). To explore the utility of adenovirus (Ad)-mediated oncolysis for rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), we tested RMS cell lines for Ad gene transduction and infection. RMS cells were variably transduced by Ad. Compared with control cells, RMS cells were less sensitive or even resistant to oncolysis b...

Background Talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) is an injectable modified oncolytic herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) hypothesized to be efficacious by at least two complimentary mechanisms of action: a) direct oncolysis of the injected tumor and b) elicitation of a systemic antitumor immune response against non-injected lesions and metastases. The purpose of this study was to test that hypothesi...

Following a century of preclinical and clinical work, oncolytic viruses are now proving themselves in randomized phase 3 trials. Interestingly, human data indicates that these agents have potent immunostimulatory activity, raising the possibility that the key consequence of oncolysis might be induction of antitumor immunity, especially in the context of viruses harboring immunostimulatory trans...

Viral oncolysis, the destruction of cancer cells by replicating virus, is an experimental cancer therapy that continues to be explored. The treatment paradigm for this therapy involves successive waves of lytic replication in cancer cells. At present, monitoring viral titer at sites of replication requires biopsy. However, repeat serial biopsies are not practically feasible for temporal monitor...

Replication-competent viruses are currently being evaluated for their cancer cell-killing properties. These vectors are designed to induce tumor regression after selective viral propagation within the tumor. However, replication-competent viruses have not resulted heretofore in complete tumor eradication in the clinical setting. Recently, heat shock has been reported to partially alleviate repl...