The use of oncolytic virus to combat neuroblastoma

Abstract

Neuroblastoma is a type of cancer that arises from immature nerve cells in the body and often appears in children. The current treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy is not a successful method of treatment due to its harm to the childs body and its inability to effectively pass the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in the brain to effectively target the tumor. Recent studies into the field of oncolytic viruses have shown the possibility to target neuroblastoma cancer cells in the brain by engineering specific viruses to express NY-ESO-1, an antigen that is tumor-specific and commonly expressed in neuroblastoma. Research also showed a method to integrate protein A into the envelope protein of retroviruses which allows monoclonal antibodies Fc region to bind with the virus, allowing specificity to an antigen. This paper combines the ideas of previous studies to design a novel model of oncolytic virus treatment that specifically targets neuroblastoma. Since the oncolytic virus can be injected directly at the site and the virus is small enough to penetrate the BBB, the paper hypothesize that the model is a valid treatment for neuroblastoma in children.