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An Introduction Of An Oncolytic Virus ( Ov )

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Oncolytic virotherapy
Introduction
An oncolytic virus (OV) is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. OVs posses the ability to selectively infect and replicate in cancer and associated endothelial cells and kill these cells in cancerous tissues while leaving normal tissues unharmed [1]. As the infected cancer cells are destroyed by lysis, they release new infectious virus particles to help destroy other cancer cells or the remaining tumor. The viruses achieve this by a number of mechanisms, including direct lysis, apoptosis, expression of toxic particles, shutdown of protein synthesis, as well as the induction of anti-tumoral immunity.

History of OVs
In the 1950s, researchers noticed a reduction of tumors in mice also injected with the encephalitis virus [1]. With the development of new models and methods for virus replication in the 1950’s and 1960’s, there were many attempts to develop viruses with greater tumor specificity, but many researchers stopped working on development due to limited success[1]. In 1956, some of the earliest human clinical trials with OVs were started to treat advanced cervical cancer [1]. However, for several years, research in this field was limited due to technological limitations. After the 1960’s, oncolytic virotherapy was almost entirely abandoned due to the lack of clear and promising results from clinical trials; at that time, molecular methods were not as advanced, so oncolytic virotherapy was in danger of being
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