Fol. Biol. 2013, 59, 68-75
Anticancer Efficiency of Reovirus in Normoxia and Hypoxia
Oncolytic viruses infect, replicate in, and lyse tumour cells but spare the normal ones. One of oncolytic viruses is a naturally occurring replicationcompetent reovirus (RV), which preferentially kills tumour cells with activated Ras signaling pathways. The aim of this study was to survey effects of RV on brain tumour-derived cells in vitro under hypoxic conditions since hypoxia causes resistance to radioand chemotherapy. This study demonstrates that RV replicates preferentially in tumour cells and that the virus is able to overcome cellular adaptation to hypoxia and infect and kill hypoxic tumour cells. RV can both replicate in hypoxic tumour microenvironment and cause the cytopathic effect, subsequently inducing cell death. We found that a large proportion of cells are killed in hypoxia (1% O2) by caspaseindependent mechanisms. Furthermore, we learned that the cell death induced by RV in hypoxic conditions is not caused by autophagy.
Keywords
oncolytic virus, reovirus, hypoxia, apoptosis, autophagy, glioblastoma, medulloblastoma.
Funding
The study was supported by the project for conceptual development of research organization 00064203 and by GACR grant No. P301/10/0356.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
