Abstract
Cancer, especially the solid tumor sub-set, poses considerable challenges to modern medicine owing to the unique physiological characteristics and substantial variations in each tumor’s microenvironmental niche fingerprints. Though there are many treatment methods available to treat solid tumors, still a considerable loss of life happens, due to the limitation of treatment options and the outcomes of ineffective treatments. Cancer cells evolve with chemo- or radiation-treatment strategies and later show adaptive behavior, leading to failed treatment. These challenges demand tailored and individually apt personalized treatment methods. Bacteriophages (or phages) and phage-based theragnostic vectors are gaining attention in the field of modern cancer medicine, beyond their bactericidal ability. With the invention of the latest techniques to fine-tune phages, such as in the field of genetic engineering, synthetic assembly methods, phage display, and chemical modifications, noteworthy progress in phage vector research for safe cancer application has been realized, including use in pre-clinical studies. Herein, we discuss the distinct fingerprints of solid tumor physiology and the potential for bacteriophage vectors to exploit specific tumor features for improvised tumor theragnostic applications.
Highlights
Cancer remains the third leading cause of death after cardiovascular and infectious diseases and it comes as no surprise that one out of four deaths in developed countries is due to cancer
Bacteriophages are promising theragnostic options owing to their nanosize, polyvalent surface properties and non-pathogenic nature and are open to desirable chemical or genetic modifications
Size: Most phages range in the nanoscale diameter [47] and are considered as optimal sized vectors/probes for biomedical applications, including cancer theragnostics
Summary
Cancer is not a simple disease, rather a complex entity which affects any organ or tissue type in the body [5] It has a genetic predisposition—accretion of mutations in cell cycle check point genes. A small cytoplasmic volume with multiple enlarged nucleoli is identified in many solid tumor cells Another striking feature of tumor cells is their ability to stay immature and undifferentiated, while the counterpart normal cells mature into specialized cells. Like nanomaterials, serve as efficient vectors in transporting cytotoxic agents to target sites with the help of targeting strategies/via the enhanced permeability retention (EPR) effect [10,11,12,13,14] Another class of prospective agents are microbe-based theragnostic agents, especially oncolytic viruses [15,16,17,18,19]. We discuss how variations in tumor physiology are being exploited for developing better phage theragnostic agents, drawing on accessible literature
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