Oncolytic viruses in the therapy of gliomas

Despite the modern advances in medicine, cure for malignant glioblastomas remains an elusive goal. Both the invasive nature and the location in vital areas of the brain make this type of tumors difficult to treat surgically, while adjuvant therapy fails to bring the expected results. Frequent recurrence and invasiveness of malignant gliomas are due to the resistance of glioma stem cells to conventional radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Technological achievements in constructing recombinant viruses yielded strains with high oncolytic activity toward glial tumors. Many of these strains have passed Phase I clinical studies and proved to be highly safe. Although the approach is obviously promising, the available strains are not efficacious enough to cure the disease and need further improvement. The review summarizes the results reported for the most successful variants of oncolytic viruses that have come down to clinical trials and discusses the prospects of new approaches to viral therapy of malignant gliomas.