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NANOMEDICINE

Phage-boosted chemotherapy

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 3, pages 680–681 (2019)Cite this article

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Drug-loaded nanoparticles that specifically bind to phages infecting cancer-promoting bacteria found in colonic tumours augment the effects of chemotherapy against colorectal cancer in mice.

Diet, alcohol, smoking, host genetics and the gut microbiota have all been linked to colorectal cancer (CRC) — the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths, with 2.2 million new cases and 1.1 million deaths per year worldwide predicted to occur by 2030 (ref. 1). In the human gut microbiota, an imbalance in its composition (known as dysbiosis) has been associated with intestinal and extra-intestinal disorders2. Comparisons of the faecal bacteria from CRC patients and from healthy individuals have also revealed that the guts of the patients are enriched with Bacteroides fragilis, Fusobacterium nucleatum and other carcinogenic bacterial species with pro-inflammatory and genotoxic properties3,4. The tumour-promoting effect of some gut microbiota is also evident in germ-free conditions, as animals treated with antibiotics have a reduced propensity to developing cancer in the colon5.

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Fig. 1: Phage-targeted microbiota-modulating nanomedicine for treating colorectal cancer in mice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Nikhil Aggarwal, In Young Hwang & Matthew Wook Chang

  2. NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Nikhil Aggarwal, In Young Hwang & Matthew Wook Chang

Authors
  1. Nikhil Aggarwal
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  2. In Young Hwang
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  3. Matthew Wook Chang
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Correspondence to Matthew Wook Chang.

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Aggarwal, N., Hwang, I.Y. & Chang, M.W. Phage-boosted chemotherapy. Nat Biomed Eng 3, 680–681 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-019-0450-z

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