Oncolytic myxoma virus is effective in murine models of triple negative breast cancer despite poor rates of infection

Abstract

Oncolytic viruses are being heavily investigated as novel methods to treat cancers; however, predicting their therapeutic efficacy remains challenging. The most commonly used predictive tests involve determining the invitro susceptibility of a tumor's malignant cells to infection with an oncolytic agent. Whether these tests are truly predictive of invivo efficacy, however, remains unclear. Here we demonstrate that a recombinant, oncolytic myxoma virus shows efficacy in two murine models of triple negative breast cancer despite extremely low permissivity of these models to viral infection. These data demonstrate that invitro infectivity studies are not an accurate surrogate for therapeutic efficacy and suggest that other tests need to be developed.