Bastin Donald, Walsh Scott R, Al Saigh Meena, Wan Yonghong
McMaster Immunology Research Centre, Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8N 3Z5, Canada.
Biomedicines. 2016 Aug 24;4(3):21. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines4030021.
The past decade has seen considerable excitement in the use of biological therapies in treating neoplastic disease. In particular, cancer immunotherapy and oncolytic virotherapy have emerged as two frontrunners in this regard with the first FDA approvals for agents in both categories being obtained in the last 5 years. It is becoming increasingly apparent that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive and that much of the therapeutic benefit obtained from the use of oncolytic viruses (OVs) is in fact the result of their immunotherapeutic function. Indeed, OVs have been shown to recruit and activate an antitumor immune response and much of the current work in this field centers around increasing this activity through strategies such as engineering genes for immunomodulators into OV backbones. Because of their broad immunostimulatory functions, OVs can also be rationally combined with a variety of other immunotherapeutic approaches including cancer vaccination strategies, adoptive cell transfer and checkpoint blockade. Therefore, while they are important therapeutics in their own right, the true power of OVs may lie in their ability to enhance the effectiveness of a wide range of immunotherapies.
在过去十年中，生物疗法在治疗肿瘤疾病方面引发了相当大的热潮。特别是癌症免疫疗法和溶瘤病毒疗法已成为这方面的两大领跑者，过去5年里这两类药物均首次获得了美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）的批准。越来越明显的是，这两种方法并非相互排斥，而且使用溶瘤病毒（OV）获得的许多治疗益处实际上是其免疫治疗功能的结果。事实上，溶瘤病毒已被证明可募集并激活抗肿瘤免疫反应，该领域目前的许多工作都围绕通过将免疫调节剂基因工程改造到溶瘤病毒骨架中等策略来增强这种活性。由于其广泛的免疫刺激功能，溶瘤病毒还可合理地与多种其他免疫治疗方法联合使用，包括癌症疫苗接种策略、过继性细胞转移和检查点阻断。因此，虽然溶瘤病毒本身就是重要的治疗方法，但其真正的威力可能在于它们能够增强多种免疫疗法的有效性。
