Recent Progress in the Molecular Imaging of Tumor-Treating Bacteria

Bacterial cancer therapy (BCT) approaches have been extensively investigated because bacteria can show unique features of strong tropism for cancer, proliferation inside tumors, and antitumor immunity, while bacteria are also possible agents for drug delivery. Despite the rapidly increasing number o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nuclear medicine and molecular imaging 2021, 55(1), , pp.7-14
Main Authors: Kang, Sae-Ryung, Min, Jung-Joon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria
Bioluminescence
Cancer
Cardiology
Clinical trials
Fluorescence
Imaging
Imaging techniques
In vivo methods and tests
Medical imaging
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Nuclear Medicine
Oncology
Orthopedics
Radiology
Review
Tropism
방사선과학
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Summary:Bacterial cancer therapy (BCT) approaches have been extensively investigated because bacteria can show unique features of strong tropism for cancer, proliferation inside tumors, and antitumor immunity, while bacteria are also possible agents for drug delivery. Despite the rapidly increasing number of preclinical studies using BCT to overcome the limitations of conventional cancer treatments, very few BCT studies have advanced to clinical trials. In patients undergoing BCT, the precise localization and quantification of bacterial density in different body locations is important; however, most clinical trials have used subjective clinical signs and invasive sampling to confirm bacterial colonization. There is therefore a need to improve the visualization of bacterial densities using noninvasive and repetitive in vivo imaging techniques that can facilitate the clinical translation of BCT. In vivo optical imaging techniques using bioluminescence and fluorescence, which are extensively employed to image the therapeutic process of BCT in small animal research, are hard to apply to the human body because of their low penetrative power. Thus, new imaging techniques need to be developed for clinical trials. In this review, we provide an overview of the various in vivo bacteria-specific imaging techniques available for visualizing tumor-treating bacteria in BCT studies.
ISSN:1869-3474
1869-3482
DOI:10.1007/s13139-021-00689-4