Cancer treatment involving oncolytic viruses

HSV: The scout and assault for digestive system tumors

More than 25% of all malignant tumors are digestive system tumors (DSTs), which mostly include esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer and cholangiocarcinoma, and colorectal cancer. DSTs have emerged as one of the prominent reasons of morbidity and death in many nations and areas around the world, posing a serious threat to human life and health. General treatments such as radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical resection can poorly cure the patients and have a bad prognosis. A type of immunotherapy known as oncolytic virus therapy, have recently shown extraordinary anti-tumor effectiveness. One of the viruses that has been the subject of the greatest research in this field, the herpes simplex virus (HSV), has shown excellent potential in DSTs. With a discussion of HSV-1 based on recent studies, we outline the therapeutic effects of HSV on a number of DSTs in this review. Additionally, the critical function of HSV in the detection of cancers is discussed, and some HSV future possibilities are shown.

Evaluation of CERS2 Gene as a Potential Biomarker for Bladder Cancer

The ceramide synthase 2 (CERS2) gene has been linked to tumour recurrence and invasion in many different types of cancers including bladder cancer. In this study, the expression levels of CERS2 in bladder cancer cell lines were analysed using qRT-PCR and the protein expression in clinical bladder cancer histopathological specimens were examined via immunohistochemistry. The potential utility of CERS2 as a predictive biomarker of response to oncolytic virotherapy was assessed by correlating the CERS2 mRNA expression to IC₅₀ values of cells treated with the Newcastle disease virus (NDV), AF2240 strain. This study demonstrates that CERS2 is differentially expressed in different types of bladder cancer cell lines and that the siRNA-mediated downregulation of the expression of CERS2 reduces the migratory potential of UMUC1 bladder cancer cells. However, there were no significant correlations between the expression levels of the CERS2 protein with bladder cancer grade/stage or between the IC50 values of cells treated with NDV and CERS2 expression. Although the utility of CERS2 expression may be limited, its potential as an antimigration cancer therapeutic should be further examined.