Abstract
Recent clinical and pre-clinical data demonstrate that adjuvant antimicrobial therapy is beneficial in cancer treatment. There could be several reasons for this effect, which include treating cancer associated bacteria and viruses, prophylaxis of post-chemotherapy infections due to immunosuppression, and antiproliferative effect of certain antimicrobials. Targeting cancer associated viruses and bacteria with antimicrobial agents is currently used for gastric, cervical, hematopoietic, liver and brain cancer. However this treatment is effective only in combination with conventional therapies. Antimicrobials can also have a direct antiproliferative and cytotoxic effect, and can cause apoptosis. Moreover, some antimicrobials are known to be helpful in overcoming side effects of drugs commonly used in cancer treatment. Chemotherapy related bacteremia and neutropenia can be overcome by the appropriately timed use of antimicrobials. This review summarizes the data on the effects of antivirals and antibiotics on cancer treatment and describes their mechanisms.
Highlights
Major conventional cancer therapies include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and symptom care
This review summarizes clinical data on the use of antivirals and antibiotics in cancer therapy and
Outcomes of cancer treatments depend on many factors, many of which are still unknown
Summary
Major conventional cancer therapies include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and symptom care. Tumor cell line models for PEL can be targeted for apoptosis by inducing the activation of latent HHV-8 infection In this case, valproate was used to trigger lytic replication of the virus, whereas antiviral drugs were used to effectively control the activated virus. There are several clinical studies showing that zidovudine treatment, in combination with interferon α (IFN-α), targets EBV in lymphoma cells [16,17] and HTLV1 in adult T-cell leukemia-lymphoma [18], leading to tumor inhibition. Antimicrobials used as anti-proliferative and cytotoxic agents In addition to the proposed use of antiviral and antibiotic agents in treatment of cancers associated with infections, these agents were reported to have direct cytostatic and cytotoxic activities in cancer (both in vitro and in vivo). Given the short survival time of patients with glioblastoma together with relative safety of acyclovir, using this antiviral as an
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