Oncolytic virotherapy for malignant tumor: current clinical status

: Oncolytic viruses, as novel biological anti-tumor agents, provide anti-tumor therapeutic effect by different mechanisms including directly selective tumor cell lysis and secondary systemic anti-tumor immune responses. Some wide-type and genetically engineered oncolytic viruses have been applied in clinical trials. Among them, T-Vec got significant therapeutic effect for melanoma patients and got the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the first oncolytic virus to treat cancer in US. However, the mechanisms of virus interaction with tumor and immune system haven't been clearly elucidated and there are still not any "gold standards" for instructions of virotherapy in clinical trials. This Review collected the recent clinical trials data from 2005 to summarize the basic oncolytic viruses biology, describes the application in recent clinical trials and discusses the challenges in the application of oncolytic viruses in clinical trials.