Oncolytic virus
Brief introduction
Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are known as viruses that can infect and destroy tumour cells. While being cleared readily in normal cells, they thrive in tumour cells, forming large amount of new viruses and cause cells to burst. As consequence, the cell contents are spread out to trigger and boost anti-tumour immune response, concomitantly, the newly formed OVs are released to infect nearby tumour cells, like a chain reaction (See diagram). Such unique inherent nature of OVs presents them as the best partners with other cancer therapies, particularly immunotherapies, for many treatment-resistant tumours.
Current OV development landscape
Currently, there are over 200 clinical trials planned, ongoing or having been completed to investigate OVs. Majority of them are based on herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), adenovirus, vaccinia virus etc.To date, T-VEC, an attenuated HSV-1, encoding granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), remains the only FDA-approved oncolytic virotherapy.
Challenge for OV development
Majority of the the OVs in clinical trial have been developed from viruses to which, most of us have been already exposed. When these viruses are introduced into patients’s bodies as OVs, the pre-existing or the acquired anti-viral immunity in the body will recognize them, déjà vous! and rapidly clear them, as consequence, largely compromising the therapeutic effects.
Our strategies
To mitigate the abrupt clearance of viral particles occured in oncolytic viral therapies, we develop infectious nucleic acids (iNA) . Unlike entire viral particles, iNAs are of low immunogenic but capable of generating OVs within cancer cells. Injection of iNAs but not entire viral particles in the body will bypass the pre-existing anti-viral immunity to clear virus at the first place – presenting a window for iNAs to reach to and be uptaken by cancer cells to for OVs. Not only pertaining the oncolytic and immune-boosting capacity, by shying away from immune destruction, our iNAs-based viral therapy platform allows multiple and systemic administration possible. Combining with other therapeutic approaches such as the most acclaimed cancer immunotherapies, it can thus reach the goal to eradicate effectively the drug-resistant/lethal metastatic cancers.
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The beauty of oncolytic viruses is their potent and selective killing of cancer cells, and their ability to boost immunotherapies. The problem is, however, that our body doesn’t like them and wants to get rid of them. Here we have a solution to solve the problem. Want to know more: