[Oncotropic viruses and antitumor autovaccines (review)]

Oncotropic viruses and antitumor autovaccines are reviewed. The progress of tumor process is associated with the invasive growth and the formation of metastases. Nowadays it is obvious that micrometastases are formed before any clinical symptoms are revealed, and, therefore, at the stage of clinical manifestation neoplastic process is in fact a systemic pathology and the surgical intervention is quite inefficient. This work deals with the main mechanisms of the progress of neoplastically transformed cells. Special account is given to the processes and methods which determine the antiblastomic effectiveness of the systemic influence of oncotropic viruses and antitumor autovaccines. The vaccine generated from the autologous tumor cells is actually quite individual. Тechnological procedure requires that the tissues should be removed from different places (primary base, metastases, lymph nodes), otherwise, the immune response to one or several determinants associated with tumor will not block the developing process, but it will promote the selective growth of subclones on the surface of which those determinants are not revealed. Hence, pharmacists face a difficult task - for the purpose of the advancement of the effectiveness of antitumor autovaccine therapy all the blastomic subclones should be infected with oncotropic viruses and additional viral antigens should be formed on their surface. Attenuated strains of natural viruses (flu, measles, herpes) and genetically engineered recombinanted viruses are generally used as oncotherapeutic agents. During the combined viro- and vaccinotherapy it is essentially important to keep the sequence of the following stages: 1) Evaluation of immune status and infection of the organism with oncotropic viruses; 2) Implementation of radical operation before the formation of antiviral immunoglobulins; 3) Removal of tumor tissues from different places ant preparation of autovaccine; 4) Starting the immunization.