THERAPEUTIC APPROACH TOWARDS COLON CANCER: BACTERIAL AID TO THE RESCUE.

Poulomee Karmakar, Manoj K. Chakrabarti^*

a Division of Pathophysiology, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, P-33, C.I.T.Road, Scheme-XM, Beliaghata, Kolkata-700010. India.

* Corresponding Author

E-mail: mkc_niced@yahoo.co.in

Tel: 91-33-2370-5533,

Fax: 91-33-2350-5066

ABSTRACT: The past years have witnessed the inculcation of interest in scientists regarding colon cancer treatment with microorganisms. This has been due to the observations that some microbes prefer to replicate selectively or exhibit preferential accumulation within tumor microenvironment. Besides, conventional therapies implied in this field displays resistance to the disease at some point of time. The preferential replication of microorganisms provides immense probability to amplify the therapeutic effect of the microorganism while sparing the normal tissues from toxicity. With the presence of plentiful effector genes which could be engineered into bacterial hosts, the therapies could be comprehensive to sequential or concurrent administration of similar or dissimilar bacteria containing different gene products. Demonstration of the concept of selective intratumoral accumulation of bacteria in cancer patients can be anticipated to lead to an enormous and new repertoire of therapeutic options for the treatment of metastatic disease such as colon cancer

Keywords: Colon cancer, bacteria, Escherichia coli, hemolysin, immunotherapy.