“This kind of technology could help to create safer and more effective cancer biotherapeutics, including engineered immune cells and bacteria in addition to oncolytic viruses,” said Dr. John Bell.Cancer-fighting (oncolytic) viruses can infect and kill cancer cells without harming normal tissues, while also delivering therapeutic / toxic genes to tumours and stimulating an anti-cancer immune response. These viruses have shown promise in laboratory and clinical studies, and the next generation could be even better thanks to an innovative synthetic biology approach developed by Dr. John Bell and his team.
As outlined in Nature Communications, Dr. Bell’s team engineered several new oncolytic viruses that can be fine-tuned with readily available oral drugs. This means that a patient could be given an infusion of a very powerful oncolytic virus, while also receiving a pill to control exactly how much that virus replicates, and another pill to control how much the virus expresses additional cancer-fighting genes.
“This kind of technology could help to create safer and more effective cancer biotherapeutics, including engineered immune cells and bacteria in addition to oncolytic viruses,” said Dr. Bell, senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.
Researchers at The Ottawa Hospital are developing powerful next-generation cancer biotherapeutics. The team behind the latest discovery includes (clockwise from bottom left): Mathieu J. F. Crupi, Xiaohong He, Julia Petryk, Marie Marotel, Stephen Boulton, Nikolas T. Martin, John C Bell, Reza Rezaei. Missing from photo: Taha Azad, Ragunath Singaravelu, Ricardo Marius, Kemal Alper Onsu.Authors: Azad T*, Rezaei R*, Singaravelu R, Pelin A, Boulton S, Petryk J, Onsu KA, Martin NT, Hoskin V, Ghahremani M, Marotel M, Marius R, He X, Crupi MJF, Hoang HD, Nik-Akhtar A, Ahmadi M, Zamani NK, Golshani A, Alain T, Greer P, Ardolino M, Dickinson BC, Tai LH, Ilkow CS, Bell JC. *contributed equally.
Funders: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Cancer Society, BioCanRx, Prostate Cancer Canada, Terry Fox Research Institute, CanPRIME/Mitacs, Taggart-Parkes Fellowship, Lebovic Fellowship, National Institutes of Health. All research at The Ottawa Hospital is also enabled by generous donors to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
Core resources: Flow Cytometry, Histology, Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre
The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health, research and learning hospital proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa. All researchers at The Ottawa Hospital follow a Responsible Innovation framework for developing and commercializing innovations in a responsible way. Researchers involved in this study hold patents related to this work.
