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Updated: Sep 7, 2025

Tailoring In Vivo Cytotoxicity Assays to Study Immunodominance in Tumor-specific CD8+ T Cell Responses
Published on: May 6, 2019
NK Cell Effector Functions and Bystander Tumor Cell Killing in Immunovirotherapy
Alessia Floerchinger1, Christine E Engeland2,3
1Center for Biomedical Research and Education (ZBAF), School of Medicine, Institute of Virology and Microbiology, Faculty of Health, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany.
Abstract:
Oncolytic virotherapy is a compelling strategy to combine cancer gene therapy with immunotherapy. Lytic virus replication in malignant cells not only enables localized transgene expression based on engineered vectors but also triggers immunogenic tumor cell death and elicits inflammation in the tumor microenvironment. Modified oncolytic viruses encoding immunomodulators have been developed to enhance antitumor immune effects and therapeutic efficacy. As one example, bispecific molecules that engage immune cells to exert antitumor cytotoxicity can be encoded within the viral vector. This chapter describes an in vitro coculture experiment to study functionality and antitumor efficacy of engineered measles vaccine strain virus encoding natural killer cell engagers. In a flow cytometry-based analysis, target cell death of noninfected bystander cancer cells and effector functions of primary human natural killer cells are investigated. This methodology can facilitate assessment of advanced oncolytic viral vectors for cancer immunotherapy.
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