Immunobiology of Anticancer Virotherapy With Newcastle Disease Virus in Cancer Patients
Conventional cancer therapy modalities, including surgery, chemotherapy,
and radiotherapy, do not have sufficient clinical efficacy in the treatment
of advanced cancers and introduction of more effective therapeutic
approaches is essential for treating patients with advanced forms of cancer.
Virotherapy with oncolytic viruses that preferentially infect and kill cancer cells
is a promising therapeutic strategy for cancer treatment. Several viruses,
including vaccinia virus, herpes simplex virus, measles, adenovirus,
vesicular stomatitis virus, myxoma virus, reovirus,
lentivirus, and Newcastle disease virus have been identified as oncolytic viruses
in preclinical and clinical studies.
Virotherapy approaches have the potential to be employed as monotherapy
or be used in combination with conventional cancer therapy modalities to
improve the overall chances of the patient’s survival and increase
the percentage of treated patients with long-term survival.
Further investigation has shown that NDV may be a suitable oncolytic agent
for virotherapy of cancers. Anticancer properties of NDV have been intensively
studied in the decades 1950s and 1960s.
Post-operative vaccination of mice with irradiated autologous tumor
cells infected with NDV resulted in the disappearance of
micro metastases from visceral organs, increased the survival
of vaccinated mice, and helped cure the cancer in about 50% of the treated mice.
Favorable properties of NDV, including selective replication of NDV
in tumor cells, lack of genetic recombination, lack of interaction with
the host cell DNA, and safety of NDV vaccination in cancer patients,
led to the clinical application of NDV virotherapy as an anticancer treatment of choice.
Vaccin Res Open J. 2017; 2(1): 13-21. doi: 10.17140/VROJ-2-108
