Oncolytic Viruses: New Cancer Immunotherapy Drugs
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 August 2024) | Viewed by 3827
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the power, speed, and adaptability of one of our oldest foes—viruses. Despite the devastating impact of these pathogens, we have been able to harness their abilities to our own advantage and to make them our allies in the fight against the deadly disease that is cancer. The introduction of more advanced gene-editing methods combined with an ever-increasing understanding of both tumor immunology and virology facilitated the development of a new class of anti-cancer therapeutics, known as oncolytic viruses. Despite their name, these viruses do not rely solely on their lytic potential. Several years of research have shown that the interplay of these recombinant viruses and the tumor-microenvironment is much more complex than we initially thought. Instead of being a purely lytic agent, oncolytic viruses can act more as immune modulators, alerting the patient’s immune system to the presence of malignant neoplasms, and thus are able to turn the infamous immunologically “cold” tumor microenvironment into a “hot” one. This can be achieved by clever design and by combining findings from the fields of oncology, immunology, and virology. Research groups around the world are developing novel, advanced, and modified virus platforms, encoding arrays of heterologous proteins and non-coding RNAs, often in combination with modulated expression systems. Combined with a wide variety of available oncolytic virus platforms, originating from the families of Adenoviruses, Herpesviruses, Poxviruses, Rhabdoviruses, and Paramyxoviruses, to name a few, there is an almost infinite field of research on this family of anti-cancer immunotherapy drugs. It is with great pleasure that we showcase a small selection of these advanced technologies developed in this Special Issue on oncolytic viruses.
Dr. Nikolas T. Martin
Guest Editor
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