Merits of the ‘good’ viruses: the potential of virus-based therapeutics

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Although viruses have generally been considered as pathogens ever since their discovery, recent research has revealed that they might assume a more important role in the survival and evolution of their hosts. Besides this, they also hold the potential as therapies for the treatment of infections, cancers, and other diseases, with several of them already commercially available on the market. In this review, we will focus on the use of different viruses for treating diseases.

Areas covered: This is a comprehensive review of the application of viruses or virus-based strategies (including bacteriophages, oncolytic viruses, viral vector-based delivery, virus-like particles, and virosomes) for therapeutic purposes. The article provides an overview of the status quo of currently available virus-based therapeutics.

Expert Opinion: The efficacy of virus-based therapies has been emphasized repeatedly in the clinical trials for virotherapy, gene delivery, and virus-like particles (VLPs), with multiple therapeutics approved and marketed. Compared with chemical and biological drugs, viruses represent a unique ‘research niche.’ As more virus-based therapeutics are moving down the pipeline, we shall expect to see a more diversified collection of related products being recognized and applied in clinical settings in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Phage therapy
• virotherapy
• viral vectors
• virus-like particles (VLPs)
• virosomes

Article Highlights

• In this review, we covered the updates of the virus-based therapeutics and provided an overview of their performance in clinical and preclinical research.

• Of the therapeutics illustrated, virotherapy (such as T-VEC), viral vector-based gene delivery, and virus-like particles (VLPs) display extraordinary potential in clinical applications as there are already products approved and marketed, with more drugs moving further down the development pipeline.

• The clinical trials for phage therapy and preclinical studies of other virus-based therapeutic platforms are also being actively performed and evaluated.

• Viral vector-based vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 (Ad5-nCoV and ChAdOx1) are in Phase III clinical trials, demonstrating the possibility of their large-scale production in the early response to a pandemic outbreak.

This box summarizes the key points contained in the article.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundationof China (Grant No. 81903549).