www.oncotarget.com Oncotarget, 2018, Vol. 9, (No. 89), pp: 35891-35906 Research Paper Oncolytic properties of non-vaccinia poxviruses Marine Ricordel1,3, Johann Foloppe1, Christelle Pichon1, Annie Findeli1, Caroline Tosch1, Pascale Cordier1, Sandrine Cochin1, Eric Quémeneur1, Christelle Camus- Bouclainville2, Stéphane Bertagnoli2 and Philippe Erbs1 1Transgene SA, Illkirch-Graffenstaden 67405, France 2IHAP, INRA, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse 31058, France 3Current address: Polyplus-transfection SA, Illkirch-Graffenstaden 67400, France Correspondence to: Philippe Erbs, email:
[email protected] Keywords: non-vaccinia poxviruses; oncolytic properties; RCNtk-/gfp::fcu1 Received: June 26, 2018 Accepted: October 24, 2018 Published: November 13, 2018 Copyright: Ricordel et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT Vaccinia virus, a member of the Poxviridae family, has been extensively used as an oncolytic agent and has entered late stage clinical development. In this study, we evaluated the potential oncolytic properties of other members of the Poxviridae family. Numerous tumor cell lines were infected with ten non-vaccinia poxviruses to identify which virus displayed the most potential as an oncolytic agent. Cell viability indicated that tumor cell lines were differentially susceptible to each virus. Raccoonpox virus was the most potent of the tested poxviruses and was highly effective in controlling cell growth in all tumor cell lines. To investigate further the oncolytic capacity of the Raccoonpox virus, we have generated a thymidine kinase (TK)-deleted recombinant Raccoonpox virus expressing the suicide gene FCU1.