The search for effective anti-cancer therapies is one of the most significant goals of modern medicine. The combination of oncolytic viruses (OV) and mRNA immunoadjuvants can significantly improve the outcome or even substitute traditional immunotherapy. In addition to the direct OV-mediated cytotoxic elimination of tumor cells, both OV and mRNA immunoadjuvants can significantly alter the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) supporting cancer cells and unleash the immune response against the malignant cells. The present study is aimed at assessing the therapeutic effects of recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) and lipid nanoparticles (LNP) delivering mRNA coding for murine interleukin-12 (mIL12) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (mGMCSF) (mRNA-LNP) in colorectal carcinoma CT26-induced tumors both as independent therapies and in combination with each other. The results of the in vivo experiment on BALB/c mice demonstrated that rVSV monotherapy did not have a significant effect, with the tumor growth inhibition index (TGII) ranging from 13.7 to 29.8% on days 6–10 after the therapy start. While monotherapy with mRNA-LNP was more effective (TGII of 48.6–53.7%), it was the therapy combining the two approaches (rVSV and mRNA-LNP) that resulted in the highest TGII of 66.7% on day 10. While these results can be further improved by optimizing the experimental design, they show the great potential of combination immunotherapy for the treatment of oncological diseases.

The high prevalence and diversity of liver diseases present a significant problem for modern healthcare. Despite FDA approval of gene therapy drugs to treat hemophilia A and B, available treatment methods for other hereditary liver diseases are mainly limited to the frequently ineffective traditional therapies and surgical intervention. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the treatment of hepatitis C, but hepatitis B is still considered an incurable disease. In this regard, the treatment of hereditary and viral liver diseases using gene or cell therapy remains relevant. This review is focused on the current state of the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) field in the context of modeling and treatment of hereditary, viral, and some other liver diseases, both ex vivo and in vivo. Here we present a detailed discussion of the possible ways of modeling liver diseases ex vivo using iPSCs (reprogramming of patient somatic cells and genetic engineering (GE) of healthy iPSCs), summarize gene editing (GE) and non-GE approaches for the treatment of liver diseases, and demonstrate that iPSCs and their derivatives are widely used to treat liver diseases in vivo. Taken together, we are presenting a comprehensive analysis of 2D and 3D iPSC-based products in the context of liver diseases, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of this platform, including the comparison with other types of stem cells and animal models. This analysis may help understand not only the potential but also the limitations associated with the use of iPSCs in the context of various types of liver diseases.