Oncolytic viruses against cancer stem cells: A promising approach for gastrointestinal cancer

Gastrointestinal cancer has been one of the five most commonly diagnosed and leading causes of cancer mortality over the past few decades. Great progress in traditional therapies has been made, which prolonged survival in patients with early cancer, yet tumor relapse and drug resistance still occurred, which is explained by the cancer stem cell (CSC) theory. Oncolytic virotherapy has attracted increasing interest in cancer because of its ability to infect and lyse CSCs. This paper reviews the basic knowledge, CSC markers and therapeutics of gastrointestinal cancer (liver, gastric, colon and pancreatic cancer), as well as research advances and possible molecular mechanisms of various oncolytic viruses against gastrointestinal CSCs. This paper also summarizes the existing obstacles to oncolytic virotherapy and proposes several alternative suggestions to overcome the therapeutic limitations.