New progress in the treatment of pancreatic cancer with oncolytic virus / 中华消化外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Pancreatic cancer is called as "the king of carcinoma" owing to its poor prognosis. The current treatment methods range from the world-famous Whipple surgery to combination chemotherapy, neoadjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and emerging immunological checkpoint inhibitors. However, they all have certain limitations and the overall survival rate of pancreatic cancer has not been improved significantly in recent decades. With the further study of tumor immunology, tumor immunotherapy has gradually become the focus of cancer therapy. As a novel immunotherapy idea, oncolytic virus therapy is gradually accepted by scholars for its safety and effectiveness. Oncolytic virus can specifically infect and lyse tumor cells. It can not only directly lyse tumor cells by self-replication but also release immune molecules and tumor antigens by lysing tumor cells, which further enhance immune anti-tumor effect without damaging normal tissues. In addition, the oncolytic virus can carry the abundant exogenous target gene through gene editing technology to further enhance the anti-tumor effect of the oncolytic virus. Due to the complexity of the microenvironment of pancreatic cancer, the oncolytic virus monotherapy has limited effects, and combination therapy has shown promising prospects. Compared with other tumor immunotherapy, oncolytic virus therapy displays high killing efficiency, targeting ability and small adverse reaction, multiple anti-tumor pathways to avoid drug resistance and low cost, and is expected to become an ideal new way for oncotherapy. Based on domestic and overseas literatures, the authors have reviewed the development of ancolytic virus therapy, treatment mechanism of oncolytic virus and its advances in pancreatic cancer in this article.