Evaluation of viral therapy for cancer treatment
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Citation
Abstract
Cancer has been increasing and has a profound impact on society. Current treatments are known to have limits so searching for more effective cancer treatments have led scientists to theorize using viruses. Viruses are submicroscopic and consist of nucleic acid that’s either RNA or DNA and can be single-stranded or double-stranded. Oncolytic Viruses uses a virus’s natural ability to infect certain cells to target and destroy cancer cells through cell lysis, apoptosis, and modifications of the cell surface membrane. They can carry transgenes such as GM-CSF, which promotes host immune responses. Oncolytic activities such as local replication and propagation also induce cytokines that engage the immune system to increase antitumor immunity. T-Vec is an oncolytic viral drug that’s recently approved for use, and many other drugs are in clinical trials awaiting approval. The common goal of these drugs is prolonging the survival of cancer patients and inducing patient specific anti-tumor immunity. These drugs have certain advantages over traditional therapies but also potential risks; a proposed study to analyze G47Δ can be used to explore the safety and efficacy of oncolytic viruses compared to traditional therapies such as chemotherapy. In this proposed study, subjects over the age of 18 are studied longitudinally over 5 years. Two hundred participants with advanced stage melanoma, breast cancer, and/or prostate cancer, where radiation and chemotherapy have not slowed the progression of disease, are enrolled and split into two groups receiving either Paclitaxel and Docetaxel or 3 x 10^8 pfu of G47Δ injected intravenously. They are monitored for severity with the statistics averaged together and a standard deviation computed for all the data. Overall, viral therapy has been shown to have a tolerable safety profile with only low-grade adverse events and largely non-overlapping toxicity with other cancer therapeutics. This is especially true given the number of late-stage patients enrolled in these studies, the severity of their diseases, as well as the side-effects associated with chemotherapy and radiation. While usage of oncolytic viral therapies is currently still low, it is hoped that it will not be long before this becomes a standard option for treatment of all cancer patients.