Researchers evaluate the unique benefits of bacteria in treating cancer

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.November 24, 2020

Announcement of the publication of a new article for Organic integration newspaper, the authors Meng Du; Jinsui Yu; Yaozhang Yang; Fei Yan and Zhiyi Chen of Guangzhou Medical University Third Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou, China, and the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China, examine the use of microbes in oncology.

Bacterial therapy is an emerging method of cancer treatment. Using 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 gone through clinical trials, the effectiveness 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 pressing problems for bacterial therapy.

Thus, some studies constructed bacteria with inducible plasmid or reactive nanoparticle adsorption, which improved controllability and specificity during bacterial therapy.

In this article, the authors consider the unique benefits 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.