Anti-cancer Substances and Safety of Lactic Acid Bacteria in Clinical Treatment

Abstract

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a kind of Gram-positive bacteria which can colonize in the biological gastrointestinal tract and play a variety of probiotic roles. LAB have a wide range of applications in industry, animal husbandry, planting, food safety, and medical science fields. Previous studies on LAB have typically concentrated on their effects on improving the digestion and absorption of the gastrointestinal tract, regulating the balance of the microflora, and inhibiting the production and accumulation of toxic substances. The resistance of LAB to cancer is a topic of growing interest and relevance. This paper provided a summary of bio-active substances of LAB when they act against cancer, as well as the safety of LAB in clinical cancer treatment. Moreover, this paper further discussed several possible directions for future research and the potential application of LAB as anti-cancer therapy.

Bioinformatics and its role in the study of the evolution and probiotic potential of lactic acid bacteria

“…Large numbers of studies involving in vitro (employing immune and cancer cell lines) and in vivo (cancer induced in mice and rats) evaluation of these potential anticancer and antitumor activities of LAB have been reported (Azam et al, 2014 ; Chondrou et al, 2018 ; El Ghany et al, 2015 ; Hwang et al, 2022 ; Nami et al, 2014 ; Saxami et al, 2016 ; Tukenmez et al, 2019 ; Tuo et al, 2015 ; Zhou et al, 2017 ). Very recently, Liu et al ( 2021a ) provided a mini-review of the anticancer substances from LAB, including the EPS, peptidoglycan, nucleic acid, bacteriocin, and S-layer proteins; while Wu et al ( 2021 ) focused on the anticancer effects and mechanism of EPS from LAB. As anticancer and antitumor activities and potentials of LAB are commonly evaluated by wet lab experiments, genome analysis is usually complementary to these studies by assessing the quality and safety of the strains (Tegopoulos et al, 2021 ).…”

Synergistic Brilliance: Engineered Bacteria and Nanomedicine Unite in Cancer Therapy

“…[ 42 ] To increase the competitiveness of bacteria in nutrient plundering at the tumor site, a series of nanocatalysts have been designed to participate in the metabolism and growth of bacteria to increase the consumption of nutrients by bacteria. [ 43 ] As a result, various efforts to synergistically integrate nanomedicine with attenuated bacteria to develop enhanced tumor treatments have mushroomed in the past five years. [ 44 ] However, a comprehensive review to summarize the role of bacteria in nanobiohybrid cancer therapy, the synergic effect of bacteria and nanomedicine in tumors, and the development of multimodal synergistic cancer therapy facilitated by bacteria are lacking.…”

BLAB2CancerKD: a knowledge graph database focusing on the association between lactic acid bacteria and cancer, but beyond

“…With nearly 10 million deaths by 2020, cancer remains one of the major challenges of the 21st century ( 9 ). Recent studies have shown that LAB can inhibit the onset or progression of cancer in various ways, which has potential clinical value in cancer prevention and treatment ( 10 ).…”