Microorganisms and Their Derivatives for Cancer Therapy

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Background

Cancer therapy has greatly advanced due to investigations and recent achievements on targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Yet, most late-stage cancers are either insensitive to the traditional therapies at the beginning or they would develop drug resistance gradually. The therapy mediated by live microorganisms or their derivatives provides a promising potential to address these challenges. Compared with conventional treatments, cancer therapies using live strains or their derivatives as direct therapeutic agents or to act as drug cargos to deliver varied anti-cancer drugs, such as bacteria-produced biomacromolecules and chemotherapeutic drugs into tumors, are not affected by the specific pathophysiology and tumor environment. Currently these therapies can be applied as a monotherapy, as well as combined with other anticancer therapies like chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy to achieve better clinical outcomes. Furtherly, given the unique natural characterizations of microorganisms and the development of synthetic biological technologies, the microscopic 'robotic factories' can be reprogrammed following simple genetic rules or sophisticated synthetic bioengineering principles to produce and deliver an array of anticancer agents. Therefore, it is extremely relevant to promote the development of microorganisms and their derivatives, which can be beneficial to inhibit malignant tumor growth and enhance traditional therapeutic efficacy.

The Research Topic aims at presenting the trend and recent advances on the use of microorganisms and their derivatives for cancer therapy. We welcome submissions of original research, short communications and review articles focusing on genetic engineering, synthetic or new identified microorganisms, new findings of current microorganisms, new strategies of using the known anticancer bacteria, and their products for monotherapy or adjuvant therapy of cancer, as well as the mechanisms underlying the anticancer effect. Especially, we encourage the new findings of microorganisms or their products as the agents for nonspecific immunity in cancer therapy.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following aspects:
• Design of drug delivery systems or therapeutic agents based on microorganism and their derivatives for cancer treatment.
• New identified microorganisms or new anticancer agents from known microorganisms for cancer treatment.
• Bacteriotherapies for enhancing traditional cancer treatments.
• Mechanisms underlying the anticancer effects of microorganisms and their derivatives.
• Other strategies that use the microorganisms or their derivatives for cancer therapy.

Keywords: Microorganism, Bacteriotherapy, Bacteriolytic therapy, Drug delivery, Bacterial products, Cancer therapy

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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