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Concept
Virotherapy
Summary
Virotherapy is a treatment using biotechnology to convert viruses into therapeutic agents by reprogramming viruses to treat diseases. There are three main branches of virotherapy: anti-cancer oncolytic viruses, viral vectors for gene therapy and viral immunotherapy. These branches use three different types of treatment methods: gene overexpression, gene knockout, and suicide gene delivery. Gene overexpression adds genetic sequences that compensate for low to zero levels of needed gene expression. Gene knockout uses RNA methods to silence or reduce expression of disease-causing genes. Suicide gene delivery introduces genetic sequences that induce an apoptotic response in cells, usually to kill cancerous growths. In a slightly different context, virotherapy can also refer more broadly to the use of viruses to treat certain medical conditions by killing pathogens.
Chester M. Southam, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, pioneered the study of viruses as potential agents to treat cancer.
Oncolytic virus
Oncolytic virotherapy is not a new idea – as early as the mid 1950s doctors were noticing that cancer patients who suffered a non-related viral infection, or who had been vaccinated recently, showed signs of improvement; this has been largely attributed to the production of interferon and tumour necrosis factors in response to viral infection, but oncolytic viruses are being designed that selectively target and lyse only cancerous cells.
In the 1940s and 1950s, studies were conducted in animal models to evaluate the use of viruses in the treatment of tumours. In the 1940s–1950s some of the earliest human clinical trials with oncolytic viruses were started.
It is believed that oncolytic virus achieve their goals by two mechanisms: selective killing of tumor cells as well as recruitment of host immune system. One of the major challenges in cancer treatment is finding treatments that target tumor cells while ignoring non-cancerous host cells. Viruses are chosen because they can target specific receptors expressed by cancer cells that allow for virus entry.
Official source
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