New bacterial therapies for lung cancer

Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer
in the United States and worldwide.
Many of the therapies currently available are ineffective, leaving patients with very few options
.
Bacterial therapy is a promising new strategy for treating cancer, but over the past five years, the treatment has rapidly advanced from laboratory experiments to clinical trials, and the most effective treatment for certain types of cancer may be in combination with other drugs
.

Researchers at Columbia University's School of Engineering report that they have developed a preclinical evaluation pipeline for the characterization
of bacterial therapies in lung cancer models.
Their new study, published December 13, 2022 in Scientific Reports, combines bacteriotherapy with other treatment modalities to improve the efficacy of the treatment without producing any additional toxicity
.
This new method enables rapid characterization of bacterial therapies and successfully combines
them with current targeted therapies for lung cancer.

Lead author Dhruba Deb, an associate research scientist studying the effects of bacterial toxins on lung cancer at Professor Tal Danino's Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, said: "We envision rapidly and selectively expanding our pipeline to improve therapeutic efficacy and safety
in solid tumors.
As someone who has lost a loved one to cancer, I expect to see this strategy move from the lab to the clinic in the
future.
”

The team used RNA sequencing to discover how cancer cells respond
to bacteria at the cellular and molecular level.
They established a hypothesis that the molecular pathways of cancer cells help cells resist bacterial therapy
.
To test their hypothesis, the researchers blocked these pathways with existing anti-cancer drugs and showed that combining the drugs with bacterial toxins was more effective at eliminating lung cancer cells
.
Using a mouse lung cancer model as an example, they validated the combination of
bacterial therapy and AKT inhibitors.

Upal Basu Roy, executive director of research at the LUNGevity Foundation, said: "This new study describes an exciting pipeline of drug development that has not been explored before in lung cancer – using toxins
from bacteria.
The preclinical data presented in the manuscript provide a strong basis for continued research in the field, opening up the possibility
of new treatment options for patients diagnosed with this deadly disease.
”

Deb plans to expand his strategy to larger studies in preclinical models of difficult-to-treat lung cancers and collaborate with clinicians to drive clinical translation
.