tailieunhanh - Bacteria in cancer therapy: a novel experimental strategy

Abstract Resistance to conventional anticancer therapies in patients with advanced solid tumors has prompted the need of alternative cancer therapies. Moreover, the success of novel cancer therapies depends on their selectivity for cancer cells with limited toxicity to normal tissues. Several decades after Coley's work a variety of natural and genetically modified non-pathogenic bacterial species are being explored as potential antitumor agents, either to provide direct tumoricidal effects or to deliver tumoricidal molecules. Live, attenuated or genetically modified non-pathogenic bacterial species are capable of multiplying. | Patyar et al. Journal of Biomedical Science 2010 17 21 http content 17 1 21 I NSC The cost of publication in Journal of Biomedical Science is bourne by the National Science Council Taiwan. JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Open Access Bacteria in cancer therapy a novel experimental strategy S Patyar1 R Joshi1 DS Prasad Byrav1 A Prakash1 B Medhi 1 and BK Das2 Abstract Resistance to conventional anticancer therapies in patients with advanced solid tumors has prompted the need of alternative cancer therapies. Moreover the success of novel cancer therapies depends on their selectivity for cancer cells with limited toxicity to normal tissues. Several decades after Coley s work a variety of natural and genetically modified non-pathogenic bacterial species are being explored as potential antitumor agents either to provide direct tumoricidal effects or to deliver tumoricidal molecules. Live attenuated or genetically modified non-pathogenic bacterial species are capable of multiplying selectively in tumors and inhibiting their growth. Due to their selectivity for tumor tissues these bacteria and their spores also serve as ideal vectors for delivering therapeutic proteins to tumors. Bacterial toxins too have emerged as promising cancer treatment strategy. The most potential and promising strategy is bacteria based gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy. Although it has shown successful results in vivo yet further investigation about the targeting mechanisms of the bacteria are required to make it a complete therapeutic approach in cancer treatment. Review Cancer is characterized by uncontrolled and invasive growth of cells. These cells may spread to other parts of the body and this is called metastasis. Although conventional anticancer therapies consisting of surgical resection radiotherapy and chemotherapy are effective in the management of many patients but for about half of cancer sufferers these are ineffective so alternative techniques are being .