The Good Virus

Viruses are usually seen as bad, especially in the midst of the COVID pandemic. So what do you do when your cancer-fighting drug is made from a live virus? You change perceptions by explaining how oncolytic immunotherapy represents an exciting new frontier. This required shifting perceptions among both healthcare professionals and laypersons seeking information on new cancer treatments. This mechanism of action (MOA) video shows what happens when a virus is reimagined as a hero that helps combat cancer.

Inspired by nature documentaries, we follow T cells of the immune system on their quest to hunt tumor cells in a forest in an elegant predator-vs-prey metaphor. The first scene introduces our predator floating through a dark, cancer-ridden forest that’s teeming with cleverly camouflaged tumor cells, showing how cancer is able to hide from the immune system.

Then we dive inside a herpes virus to show how it is genetically transformed into our hero, RP1. Injected into the scene, RP1 alerts T cells to the cancer’s presence, allowing them to find and fight cancer wherever it may hide.

Once ineffective predators unable to find their prey, T cells are now armed to seek and destroy cancer cells throughout the body—eliminating this threat and restoring life and light to the forest.