Bacteria in the cancer therapy

Abstract

Human has been fighting with cancer for 130 years since the first tumor radical surgery in 1884. During this 130 years of cancer treatment history, there has developed mainly 4 types of treatment, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and immunotherapy. .However all of these treatment have their own side-effect, including the harm to normal cells, high cost, long developing time. And traditional cancer treatment are often failed to eliminate all the tumor tissue so few patients can be cure completely. Developing an effective cancer treatment is still a challenge. Luckily, a special approach is developing rapidly which is called bacteriotherapy. It can be combined with traditional treatment like chemotherapy and immunotherapy, use bacteria as a vector to deliver the drug or tumor suppressing gene to the tumor. In this way, the effect of harming normal cells can be reduce and the accuracy of attacking tumor can be improved. There are also tumor-specific bacteria found living in tumor which can be effective in cancer treatment. How to use bacteria well in cancer treatment is remain a challenge. This article reviewed the advantages of using bacteria for cancer treatment and the mechanism of bacteria in cancer treatment, giving example of the use of intestinal bacteria, involving the challenge and future of bacteriotherapy.