Virotherapy with Newcastle Disease Virus for Cancer Treatment and its Efficacy in Clinical Trials

Abstract

Cancer at now is a leading cause of death in humans worldwide due to the lack of efficient therapeutic modalities for advanced cancers. Therefore, novel therapeutic approaches have been investigated in past decades. Virotherapy is one of these approaches studied for more than 50 years with favorable results in some cancer patients. Several viruses have been used as oncolytic viruses in clinical studies. Newcastle disease virus (NDV), an avian pathogenic virus, is a promising oncolytic virus that preferentially infects and kills human cancer cells. Four major NDV-based vaccination approaches have been used in cancer patients, including vaccination with free infectious NDV particles, NDV-infected irradiated tumor cells, lysate from NDV-infected tumor cells, and dendritic cells pulsed with lysate from NDV-infected tumor cells. NDV vaccinations were well tolerated by cancer patients and reported side effects were mild. Furthermore, NDV-based vaccination can be combined with other anticancer modalities, such as other immunotherapy approaches, surgery, and chemotherapy agents, to induce stronger antitumor effects. In this article, we reviewed various aspects of NDV virotherapy in human cancers and its therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials.