Dear Editor
We read with great interest the article by Ottaiano et al. titled “Unexpected tumor reduction in metastatic colorectal cancer patients during SARS-Cov-2 infection” 1 reporting a very interesting three colorectal cancer (mCRC) cases experiencing infection by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), and all three patients surprisingly showed improvement in mCRC disease burden.
Induction of apoptosis is considered to be one of the promising strategies for the development of new anti-cancer therapies. 2 Infection induced by SARS-CoV-2 is associated with increased rate of apoptosis. 3 Therefore, we propose that infection with low-pathogenic SARS-CoV-2 may lead to efficient and rapid oncolysis, especially with the information that cancer remission was seen in many patients infected with SARS-CoV-2.4–6 Research is urgently needed to uncover the possibility of using oncolytic SARS-CoV-2 to specifically target cancer cells.
Pasin and colleagues reported a very interesting male patient case of a temporary remission of refractory natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma during COVID-19 infection, and he surprisingly relapsed after COVID-19 resolution. 5 This remission of NK lymphoma was observed during COVID-19 infection, with surprising clinical and laboratory amelioration, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have some oncolytic activity. 5 In a recent study, Challenor and Tucker reported an interesting case of remission of Hodgkin’s lymphoma after infection with SARS-CoV-2. 4 They hypothesized that infection with SARS-CoV-2 triggered an anti-tumor immune response. The proposed mechanisms of action could be cross-reactivity of pathogen-specific T-cells with tumor antigens and activation of NK cell through inflammatory cytokines secreted in response to infection. 4 Sollini and colleagues recently reported that a 61-year-old patient had complete remission of follicular lymphoma after SARS-CoV-2 infection, with exclusion of malignancy guided by computed tomography (CT) biopsy performed twice. 6
Keeping in mind the current cases of cancer remission seen in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 as well as SARS-CoV-2 apoptotic feature, there is an urgent need to investigate developing of oncolytic SARS-CoV-2 to specifically target cancer cells.
Footnotes
Conflict of interest statement: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD: Ahmed Donia 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2130-3700
Contributor Information
Ahmed Donia, Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan.
Ramla Shahid, Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Muhammad Nawaz, Institute of Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan.
Tahir Yaqub, Institute of Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan.
Habib Bokhari, Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; Kohsar University Murree, Murree, Pakistan.
References
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