Designing and building oncolytic viruses

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

Direct cell-to-cell transfer of viruses has the advantage of stealth as the virus cannot be neutralized by antiviral antibodies in the interstitial fluid [121] . Nonfusogenic viruses can be armed with fusogenic membrane glycoproteins (FMGs) to enable stealthy spread through intercellular fusion leading to the formation of large, nonviable multinucleated syncytia which may also serve as excellent antigen presenting cells for amplification of the antitumor immune response [122] . By way of example, VSV encoding measles fusogenic glycoproteins and HSVs encoding the fusogenic gibbon ape leukemia virus glycoproteins have shown superior efficacy when compared with their corresponding parental viruses [123, 124] .