Discovery of Intratumoral Oncolytic Bacteria Toward Targeted Anticancer Theranostics

Abstract

Unveiling biomedical functions of tumor-resident microbiota is challenging for developing advanced anticancer medicines. This study demonstrates that isolated intratumoral bacteria, associated with natural purple photosynthetic bacteria, have inherent biocompatibility and strong immunogenic anticancer efficacies. They preferentially grow and proliferate within a targeted tumor milieu, which effectively causes immune cells to infiltrate the tumor and provoke strong anticancer responses in various syngeneic mouse models, including colorectal cancer, sarcoma, metastatic lung cancer, and extensive drug-resistant breast cancer. Furthermore, these functional bacteria-treated mice exhibit excellent anticancerous responses and have significantly prolonged survival rates with effective immunological memory. Light-harvesting nanocomplexes of microbial consortia of intratumoral bacteria and purple photosynthetic bacteria can diagnose tumors using bio-optical-window near-infrared light, making them useful theranostic agents for highly targeted immunological elimination of the tumor and for precisely marking tumor location.

Keywords: bacteria; cancer; immunology; near-infrared; theranostics.