The biggest problem in cancer therapeutics is selectivity. Using oncolytic viral therapies, high selectivity can be achieved using the combination of selective infection and selective replication. Here, we want to address selective replication. For DNA viruses, this can be accomplished with promoters to control transcription and genome replication.  However, for RNA viruses, this does not work. A potential solution to control replication for RNA viruses is the use of aptazymes. Aptazymes are self-cleaving units composed of a riboswitch and an aptamer….

In this post, I would like to introduce the Humane Genomics Artificial Virus Platform. Why develop an artificial virus platform? For decades, a lot of research has been conducted to see if natural viruses can be used as cancer therapeutics, with limited success. Over the last 10 years, the technology to engineer, to build viruses specifically as cancer therapeutics has matured. However, most technology approaches to make these viruses are complicated, error prone, time consuming and expensive. To address these…