Herpes Virus as Therapy

Oncolytic viral therapy uses genetically-modified viruses to destroy cancer tumors. A recent blog article describes a novel treatment for human sarcoma tumors that combines "a herpes virus genetically altered to express a drug-enhancing enzyme with a chemotherapy drug." Physician and researcher Timothy P. Cripe of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center said “Our study shows the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide (CPA) enhances the anti-tumor effectiveness of the oncolytic virus rRp450 in mice carrying aggressive human sarcoma, resulting in significant tumor shrinkage."

As a dsDNA virus closely associated with humans, Herpes is particularly suitable for oncolytic viral therapy. Genetically modified Herpes virus have been rendered non-pathogenic by removing the virulence genes.

The rest of the blog is pretty interesting and I recommend checking it out.

Photo from NCBI.