LAUSR

Developing effective therapies for patients with cancer is the work of the century. This work is for individuals wishing to deal with the single biggest public health problem, taking the most lives in those younger than 85 years, namely, cancer, bad news for those of us advancing in age. Of the cancers, lung cancer has been the most formidable. But it currently is bowing to effective immunotherapies and targeted therapies for subsets of patients with molecularly defined neoplasms. The authors’ report details on the early days of oncolytic viral therapies designed to treat neoplasms, initiated at Memorial Sloan Kettering more than 70 years ago and moving though murine models and experimental clinical trials. Approved viral therapies using herpes virus expressing granulocyte– macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) have been applied for patients with melanoma and experimentally for those with lung cancer. The major problems besetting the field had been the ability to sustain a viral infection capable of preferentially lysing the tumor while not being eliminated by the host immune response before mediating important antitumor effects. PRESENT