Infectious Diseases - Department of Molecular Virology

Department of Experimental Pathology

The metastasis of breast cancer to the brain and central nervous system (CNS) is a problem of increasing importance, therefore new treatments are needed, as current therapeutic options are limited by deleterious side effects and are generally palliative. Given my long-standing interest in oncolytic virotherapy, I joined the J.M. Markert/Parker/Gillespie research group at UAB to gain additional experience in murine models development and related surgical techniques. In details, I evaluated further the antitumoral efficacy of M002, an oncolytic herpes simplex virus (HSV) which lacks both copies of the γ(1)34.5 neurovirulence gene and carries a murine interleukin 12 (IL-12) expression cassette. During this period I validated its antitumor efficacy in a variety of preclinical models of primary brain tumors. Furthermore I contributed to the establishment of a syngeneic model of metastatic breast cancer with high propensity for brain metastasis, constitutively expressing the Gaussia luciferase gene, which could allow for in vivo monitoring of cancer progression upon oncolytic virus treatment. These studies provided the proof-of-principle that a γ(1)34.5-deleted IL-12 expressing oncolytic HSV could serve as a potential new therapy for brain metastatic breast cancer.