The virus replicates within the tumour cell, destroying it, and then infects neighbouring tumour cells where the lytic cycle is recapitulated until it is attenuated by an immune response, or the number of susceptible host cells has depleted.61 Defects in the apoptotic pathway, such as p53, are present in many tumour cells, propagating tumour cell proliferation.48,63 OVs can be altered to circumvent this through deletion of the viral protein E1, which is an inhibitor of apoptosis, thus increasing p53 and triggering apoptosis.63,64. Here, TP53 is linked to neoplasm.