Suicide gene-armed measles vaccine virus for the treatment of pancreatic cancer

Virotherapy comprises a novel therapeutic mode by selectively destroying cancer cells through employment of oncolytic viruses. Currently, virotherapeutic approaches are investigated especially in hard to treat tumor entities such as pancreatic carcinoma which exhibit very “aggressive” tumor biologies. In our study, we used a Measles Virus (MeV) vector being “armed” with the SCD suicide gene (MeV-SCD; Berchtold et al., 2013) which exerts a strong tumoricidal bystander effect by conversion of the prodrug 5-FC into the chemotherapeutic compound 5-FU. We employed a panel of 8 well characterised human pancreatic canc…