William Coley first used live bacteria as an immune stimulant to treat cancer way back in 1893. Since then, however, progress with innate immunotherapy has been surprisingly very slow.

Indeed, to date only one therapeutic cancer vaccine has actually been approved by the FDA (Sipuleucel-T, Provenge, Dendreon), one oncolytic virus was approved in China back in 2006 (H101, a direct derivative of the E1B55k-deleted Onyx-015 that had modest activity at best) and another could soon be approved by the FDA later this year (T-VEC, Amgen).

In today’s review, we take a look at the oncolytic viral space and explore the issues, challenges and companies involved. Is this all set to be a bed of roses, or is a thorny future predicted?

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