Bacteria-Tumor Microenvironment Interactions: Bacteria-Based Tumor Therapy
WU Wanquan, ZHAO Xiangqian, CHEN Qi*, SHEN Yangkun*
In the past decade, significant progress has been made in the cancer treatment. However, conventional therapies still suffer from non-cancerous cytotoxicity, the inability of drugs to reach deep tumor tissues, and the continued increase of tumor cell resistance. Compared with other cancer therapies, bacteria have been widely used in clinical research not only as gene therapy vectors but also for specifically targeting the hypoxic TME (tumor microenvironment). Since bacteria are a strong immunogenic substance, they can effectively activate immune cells even in the immunosuppressed tumor microenvironment. Therefore, bacteria-based anti-cancer therapeutic approaches have great potential in tumor immunotherapy. More strikingly, with the development of synthetic biology, bacteria can be manipulated through genetic techniques and reprogrammed to induce the production of anti-cancer drugs, thus developing unique cancer therapies. However, as a novel oncology treatment, the safety and targeting of bacteria are of general concern. This review will focus on the progress of the application of bacteria in tumor immunotherapy, and discuss the safety and targeting issues, providing a new idea for drug development in the field of anti-cancer therapy
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