A major challenge to oncolytic virus therapy is that individual cancers vary in their sensitivity to oncolytic viruses, even when these cancers arise from the same tissue type. Variability in response may arise due to differences in the initial genetic lesions leading to cancer development. Alternatively, susceptibility to viral oncolysis may change during cancer progression. These hypotheses were tested using cells from a transgenic mouse model of prostate cancer infected with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Primary cultures from murine cancers derived from prostate-specific Pten deletion contained a mixture of cells that were susceptible and resistant to VSV. Castration-resistant cancers contained a higher percentage of susceptible cells than cancers from non- T here has been a great deal of progress in the development of new replication-competent viruses that kill cancer cells (oncolytic viruses), in understanding their mechanisms of oncolysis, and in their advancement to clinical trials (1-3). The key biological underpinning of oncolytic virus therapy is that activation of proliferative signaling pathways in cancer cells often leads to downregulation of antiviral pathways, making cancer cells more susceptible to virus infection than normal cells (4-7). Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is a well-established example of a highly cytolytic virus with a tropism for cancers that have downregulated their antiviral responses (5). Our laboratory and others have made a variety of genetic modifications to enhance the selectivity of VSV for cancers versus normal tissues (7-14). For example, viruses with mutations in the viral M protein, which is responsible for suppressing host antiviral responses, are defective in their ability to invade normal tissues (15, 16) but effectively infect cancers that are defective in their antiviral responses (3). Genetically engineered VSV is currently in a phase I clinical trial for localized treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (2). However, one of the major challenges to oncolytic virus therapy is that individual cancer cell lines vary dramatically in their sensitivity to oncolytic viruses, even when these cancers arise from the same tissue type (7,13,(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22). The experiments presented here address the origin of these differences in susceptibility to oncolytic VSV among prostate cancers.Human prostate cancer develops as normal prostate epithelium acquires a series of mutations and epigenetic changes that lead to invasive adenocarcinoma of the prostate (23). Further mutations lead to development of metastatic prostate cancer that spreads to other organs. For patients with localized prostate cancer, radiation therapy and/or radical prostatectomy typically achieve Ͼ90% disease-free survival within 5 years (24, 25). How-