Researchers assess the unique advantages of bacteria in cancer treatment

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal, the authors Meng Du; Jinsui Yu; Yaozhang Yang; Fei Yan and Zhiyi Chen from the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China and Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China, review the use of microbes in oncology.

Bacterial therapy is an emerging method of tumor treatment. By utilizing wild-type bacteria or engineered bacteria to treat solid tumors, bacterial therapy has recently attracted attention due to its high therapeutic specificity.

Although many bacterial strains have been tested in animal models or have even advanced to clinical trials, the efficacy of bacterial therapy remains undesirable. The lack of efficient control methods could cause side effects as well as insufficient therapeutic efficiency, both of which are urgent problems for bacterial therapy.

Therefore, some studies have constructed bacteria with inducible plasmid or adsorption with responsive nanoparticles, which improved controllability and specificity during bacterial therapy.

In this article, the authors consider the unique advantages of bacteria in cancer treatment and highlight the issues associated with the application of bacterial therapy, focusing on the incorporation of various methodologies in the advancement of some controllable strategies in bacterial therapy.