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Viruses and drugs combine to form potent anti-cancer therapy
April 22, 2015
Dr.
Jean-Simon Diallo
and his colleagues have discovered that compounds that disrupt our cells’ inner skeleton (called microtubule-destabilizing agents) can greatly enhance oncolytic virus cancer therapy in mouse and cell culture models. As described in
Nature Communications
, it appears that our cells’ inner skeleton plays a crucial role in making an anti-viral protein called interferon, so disrupting this skeleton also reduces the anti-viral defences of the cells. The combination therapy also seems to increase “bystander” killing of uninfected cancer cells without harming normal cells.
Microtubule-destabilizing agents have been used to treat cancer for many years and oncolytic viruses are currently being tested in clinical trials, so it would be feasible to test these therapies together in a clinical trial in the near future.
Dr. Diallo and his colleagues were also recently granted a U.S.
patent
for several drugs that enhance oncolytic virus therapy.
Co-authors:
Rozanne Arulanandam, Cory Batenchuk, Oliver Varette, Chadi Zakaria, Vanessa Garcia, Nicole E. Forbes, Colin Davis, Ramya Krishnan, Raunak Karmacharya, Julie Cox, Anisha Sinha, Andrew Babawy, Katherine Waite, Erica Weinstein, Theresa Falls, Andrew Chen, Jeff Hamill, Naomi De Silva, David P. Conrad, Harold Atkins, Kenneth Garson, Carolina Ilkow, Mads Kærn, Barbara Vanderhyden, Nahum Sonenberg, Tommy Alain, Fabrice Le Boeuf, John C. Bell.
Funders:
Terry Fox Research Institute, Cancer Research Society, Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
is the research arm of
The Ottawa Hospital
and is an affiliated institute of the
University of Ottawa
, closely associated with its faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute includes more than 1,700 scientists, clinical investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff conducting research to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease. Support our research. Give to the
Tender Loving Research
campaign.
For further information, please contact
Jennifer Ganton
Director, Communications and Public Relations
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Office: 613-737-8899 x73325
Cell: 613-614-5253
jganton@ohri.ca