IFN-I-tolerant oncolytic Semliki Forest virus in combination with anti-PD1 enhances T cell response against mouse glioma.

Oncolytic virotherapy holds promise of effective immunotherapy against otherwise nonresponsive cancers such as glioblastoma. Our previous findings have shown that although oncolytic Semliki Forest virus (SFV) is effective against various mouse glioblastoma models, its therapeutic potency is hampered by type I interferon (IFN-I)-mediated antiviral signaling. In this study, we constructed a novel IFN-I-resistant SFV construct, SFV-AM6, and evaluated its therapeutic potency , , and in the IFN-I competent mouse GL261 glioma model.

Cancer vaccine based on a combination of an infection-enhanced adenoviral vector and pro-inflammatory allogeneic DCs leads to sustained antigen-specific immune responses in three melanoma models.

Autologous patient-derived dendritic cells (DCs) modified to present tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) are frequently used as cancer vaccines. However, apart from the stringent logistics in producing DCs on a patient basis, accumulating evidence indicate that engineered DCs are poor in migration and in fact do not directly present TAA epitopes to naïve T cells . Instead, it is proposed that bystander host DCs take up material from vaccine-DCs, migrate and subsequently initiate antitumor T-cell responses.