Abstract:Oncolytic adenoviruses are genetically altered to replicate within tumor cells while exhibiting a high degree of infectivity, good safety and specificity. The use of oncolytic adenoviruses to treat malignant brain tumors has been proved to be a promising mode of cancer therapy. Local injection of adenoviral vectors fails to reach scattered infiltrative tumor cells within the brain parenchyma and the therapeutic effect of intracereberal injections of oncolytic adenoviruses is only seen in the vicinity of the injection site. To remedy this and prevent possible tumor recurrence, stem cells have been explored as vehicles for gene therapy in brain tumors given that they possess an intrinsic tropism for brain glioma.