Oncolytic Virotherapy in Cancer Treatment

Oncolytic virus therapy (OVT), a form of immunotherapy, is based on the use of genetically engineered viruses that selectively infect cancerous cells; produce progeny which are capable of lysing the infected malignant cells as well as elicit a systemic anti-tumor immune response. Advances in molecular virology, synthetic biology, and immuno-oncology have allowed for significant improvements in the tumor specificity, safety, and efficacy of all forms of oncolytic viral systems. This review will discuss the various mechanisms by which OVT achieves tumor cell selectivity, methods of genetic modification for enhancing the therapeutic potential of these systems, how they modulate the tumor microenvironment (TME), their current clinical applications, their application in combination with other therapeutic modalities, their limitations, the development of biomarkers for monitoring the therapeutic response and emerging technologies being developed for translation into the clinic through 2026.