Exploring the use of “smart viruses” to treat glioblastoma
Fast facts
- Title: Developing next generation virotherapies for glioblastoma
- Lead Researcher: Dr Emily Bates
- Where: Cardiff University
- When: January 2025 – December 2027
- Cost: £225,000 over 3 years
- Research type: Glioblastoma, virotherapy
- Grant round: Future Leaders
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary brain tumour in adults. The prognosis for patients with a GBM is poor due to several factors including tumour recurrence, lack of effective treatments, poor responses to existing treatment, and suppression of the immune system.
What is it?
There are many difficulties in creating treatments for glioblastoma (GBM), partly because it can evade the immune system. We urgently need therapies that not only have fewer side effects but also stop the tumour from coming back.
One promising approach is using specially modified viruses, known as oncolytic viruses, which can infect and kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells. These viruses work by recognising signals from cancer cells, allowing them to distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells. Oncolytic viruses have already been tested against pancreatic, breast, and oesophageal cancers. These modified viruses are designed to detect only a specific signal released by the cancer cells, ensuring they have minimal interaction with healthy cells. They will only activate when they reach the tumour, ignoring other signals in the body.
In this project, Dr. Emily Bates is focusing on adapting viruses to specifically target GBM cells. Since GBM cells are able to “hide” from the immune system, Dr. Bates wants to use these viruses to target GBM cells and deliver immunotherapy drugs. These drugs will help the immune system recognise and destroy cancer cells. By altering the viruses to include an immune response in their DNA, Dr. Bates hopes they will effectively seek out and destroy GBM cells.
Why is it important?
The purpose of this project is to develop new treatments for people diagnosed with a GBM. These viruses will hopefully open an avenue to a new form of safe and effective treatment.
Through this funding we hope to develop more potent and more effective therapies by combining our ‘smart virus’ with immunotherapies that have been used in the clinic
Dr Emily Bates
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In this section
Dr. Emily Bates
Emily is a postdoctoral researcher at Cardiff University. She works with oncolytic viruses, and has developed a “smart virus” that can recognise glioblastoma and destroy it without harming healthy cells. She is aiming to use these viruses to selectively target glioblastoma cells and deliver immunotherapies, boosting the patients’ immune system and allowing the immune cells to recognise and destroy the tumour.