Abstract: Surgical removal together with chemotherapy and radiotherapy has used to be the pillars of cancer treatment. Although these traditional methods are still considered as the first-line or standard treatments, non-operative situation, systemic toxicity or resistance severely weakened the therapeutic effect. More recently, synthetic biological nanocarriers elicited substantial interest and exhibited promising potential for combating cancer. In particular, bacteria and their derivatives are omnipotent to realize intrinsic tumor targeting and inhibit tumor growth with anti-cancer agents secreted and immune response. They are frequently employed in synergistic bacteria-mediated anticancer treatments to strengthen the effectiveness of anti-cancer treatment. In this review, we elaborate on the development, mechanism and advantage of bacterial therapy against cancer and then systematically introduce the bacteria-based nanoprobes against cancer and the recent achievements in synergistic treatment strategies and clinical trials. We also discuss the advantages as well as the limitations of these bacteria-based nanoprobes, especially the questions that hinder their application in human, exhibiting this novel anti-cancer endeavor comprehensively.

Keywords: bacteria-based nanoprobe, bacteria-mediated synergistic cancer therapy, nanomedicine, tumor targeting, tumor immune microenvironment, clinical trial