Oncolytic Virotherapy(OV): ‘Next-gen’ cancer therapy can kill tumours without harming healthy cells

Source: The post is based on the article “’Next-gen’ cancer therapy can kill tumours without harming healthy cells” published in Economic Times on 7th July 2022.

What is the News?

Researchers in the US have developed a novel strategy in Oncolytic Virotherapy(OV) to improve a cancer therapy that can kill tumour cells while leaving nearby healthy tissues intact.

What is Oncolytic Virotherapy(OV)?

Oncolytic viruses can kill cancer cells while leaving nearby healthy cells and tissues intact.

In oncolytic virotherapy, the treatment exerts its influence by activating an antitumor immune response made of immune cells such as Natural Killer(NK) cells.

However, sometimes those natural killers limit the oncolytic viruses and so despite the exciting development in the OV field in recent years, there is room for improvement to tackle some limitations, including the relatively weak therapeutic activity and lack of means for effective systemic delivery.

What have the researchers developed?

Researchers have developed a novel strategy that not only can prevent Natural Killer(NK) cells from clearing the administered oncolytic virus but also goes one step further by guiding them to attack tumour cells. This is done by deleting the region of the gene which shows to activates the signalling pathway that enables the virus to replicate in normal cells.