Emerging Cancer Therapy Microbial Approaches and Biotechnological Tools

This book explores the potential and actual uses of live bacteria or their products in the treatment of cancer. Providing a state-of-the-art overview of the field, this book breaks new ground in emerging cancer treatment modalities. The many microbes that are currently and can potentially be used therapeutically and their products will be reviewed in detail, and studies involving clinical trials, as well as clinical evaluation with these novel anticancer agents will be addressed.Organized into four sections with fourteen to seventeen chapters, this book begins with a section of chapters detailing the use of live or attenuated bacteria and viruses in the treatment of cancer. The second section covers bacterial products, such as proteins/peptides, toxins, antibiotics, DNA and other products, as anticancer agents. The third section describes an overview about recent and representative patents in the field of bacteria/bacterial products as anticancer agents. Finally, the book addresses the benefits of the emerging multi-targeting approach of a drug (drug promiscuity) in anticancer drug design and discovery.

Arsnio Fialho, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Principal Investigator for the Institute of Biotechnology and Bioengineering in the Instituto Superior Tcnico at the Universidade Tcnica de Lisboa, Portugal. His current scientific interests are focused on the study of bacterial proteins, such as azurin and Laz, as novel multi-targeted drug candidates with anticancer activities. He is the author or coauthor of more than fifty papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and, during the last four years, became the holder of five U.S. patents. Dr. Fialho teaches courses in biochemistry, molecular biology, and bioinformatics. Ananda Chakrabarty, PhD, is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. In addition to more than 250 research publications, he has secured nine U.S. patents during the last four years on azurin and Laz, two bacterial proteins with anticancer, anti-viral and anti-parasitic activities. He also is the recipient of a patent on the first life form, a genetically manipulated pseudomonad designed to degrade multiple hydrocarbons present in crude oil, as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 in the celebrated court case Diamond v. Chakrabarty.