Bacteriotherapy in gastrointestinal cancer

The most prevalent gastrointestinal (GI) cancers include colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, and liver cancer, known as the most common causes of cancer-related death in both men and women populations in the world. Traditional therapeutic approaches, including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have failed in the effective treatment of cancer. Therefore, there is an urgent need for finding new effective anticancer agents. The available evidence and also the promising results of using bacteria as the anticancer agents on numerous cancer cell lines have attracted the attention of scientists for the therapeutic role of bacteria in the field of cancer therapy. Moreover, several studies on the bacteriotherapy agents have used genetic engineering to overcome the challenges and enhance the efficacy with the least drawbacks. Numerous bacterial species that can specifically target and internalize into the tumor cells are used live, attenuated, or genetically as compared to selectively consider the hypoxic condition of tumor, which results in the tumor suppression. The present study is a comprehensive review of the current literature on the use of bacteria and their substances such as bacteriocins and toxins in the treatment of different types of gastrointestinal cancers.