Engineered viruses have proven to be powerful “bullets” to target cancer cells and to promote their immunogenic death. Oncolytic viruses are replicative viruses that preferentially or exclusively infect tumor cells while preserving healthy cells. Some of them exhibit immuno-adjuvant properties that can induce or reinforce the antitumor immune response thus breaking immune tolerance to the cancer.

Measles live attenuated virus is one of the safest and most efficacious human vaccines that saves 2-3 million babies’ lives each year. The virus was attenuated in the 60s by serial passages on chicken cells giving rise to several attenuated strains among which the Schwarz strain is the most attenuated and widely used in human preventive medicine.

Oncovita’s Measovir^TM proprietary platform relies on a DNA plasmid vector that expresses a modified measles Schwarz virus antigenome able to generate recombinant viruses by using a clonal reverse genetics system.