Designing and building oncolytic viruses

Maroun, Justin; Muñoz-Alía, Miguel; Ammayappan, Arun; Schulze, Autumn; Peng, Kah-Whye; Russell, Stephen

In light of recent clinical progress, interest in the approach is burgeoning. One critical milestone was the 2015 marketing approval granted in Europe and the USA for talimogene laherparepvec (T-Vec, Imlygic™), an engineered HSV encoding GM-CSF. This virus, administered intratumorally every 2 weeks for malignant melanoma, led to complete resolution in 47% of injected tumors and boosted systemic antitumor immunity leading to resolution of 9% of distant un infected visceral tumors [12] . Subsequent clinical studies have shown that responses are more frequent and more durable when T-Vec (and other OVs such as coxsackievirus A21) is combined with immune checkpoint For reprint orders, please contact: [e-mail] review Maroun, Muñoz-Alía, Ammayappan, Schulze, Peng & Russell future science group inhibitor antibody therapy [13] . Another significant milestone was the demonstration that a systemically administered oncolytic measles virus can target and destroy disseminated cancer in a human subject [11] .