Improvement of therapeutic anti-cancer strategies by combination of oncolytic vaccinia virus GLV-1h68 with epigenetically modulating agents

Introduction: Oncolytic viruses have emerged as powerful tools for selectively killing tumor cells with moderate toxicity for healthy non-malignant tissues. However, virus-induced oncolysis often is limited by poor access of oncolytic viruses to tumor sites (low efficiencies of tumor tissue colonization with virotherapeutics). Therefore, we analyzed combinations of the prototypic oncolytic vaccinia virus GLV-1h68 (encoding GFP as a marker gene) with two histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) with the purpose of overcoming both infection barriers as well as therapy resistance mechanisms, respectively. Methods: Tw…