Research Professor Akseli Hemminki presenting: “Compassionate use of oncolytic adenovirus therapy in patients with advanced cancer”. Asia Pacific Cancer Conference. Tsukuba, Japan.
APCC Tsukuba, Japan 2009
Research Professor Akseli Hemminki
Compassionate Use of Oncolytic Adenovirus Therapy in Patients with Advanced Cancer
Metastatic cancer remains difficult to treat effectively and treatments are in most cases not curative despite sometimes significant side effects. Novel approaches such as gene therapy hold potential for the treatment of various tumor types. One promising cancer gene therapy approach is oncolytic adenoviruses, which are able to infect, replicate in and lyse tumor cells. Recent data from clinical trials has shown that they are safe and can be effective when combined to standard therapy. However, single agent antitumor efficacy would benefit from improvement. This talk will introduce some strategies that are being used to improve tumor cell transduction and antitumor efficacy, including arming of the virus with immunostimulatory transgenes. Furthermore, an overview of the most important clinical approaches with oncolytic adenoviruses will be given, including our own compassionate use scheme, where 150 patients have been treated with promising results. Safety, efficacy, virological and immunological data will be presented.
