Probiotics-based Anticancer Immunity In Oral And Oropharyngeal Cancer

Oral and Oropharyngeal cancer constitute severe community health problems across the globe. Annually about 400,000 new cases of oral cancer are detected globally. Oral cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer in the world, and it is the leading cause of death, particularly in the Southeast Asian region. In recent times, a gradual surge in cases of oral cancer has been witnessed in many developed countries, such as France. In the search for safe and effective therapy for cancer, probiotics have gained recent attention from many research groups worldwide. Probiotics have an advantageous effect on human health, which are experimentally and clinically proven to exert overall beneficial effects. Probiotics are generally defined as the sum of harmless live bacteria, molds, and yeasts that have beneficial effects on human health. This chapter discusses the potential role of probiotics as anticancer adjuvants owing to their modulatory effect on anticancer immunity. Anticancer immunity-based properties include the restraint of the growth of microbiota engaged in the making of mutagens and carcinogens and change in the metabolism of carcinogen and DNA resistance from oxidative damage as well as regulation of the immune system. At present, chemotherapy and immunotherapy are mostly preferred for the treatment of oral cancer, but these treatments have the foremost disadvantage that causes drug resistance and recurrence of the disease. To overcome such problems, nowadays, probiotics have been recommended as complementary treatment modalities for the development of new therapy along with standard chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic agents by improving the immune system. Specific microbiota in the human body supplies the production of the most useful metabolites that exert optimistic properties on the immune system in opposition to various diseases such as cancer.

Keywords: Cancer immunoediting, Cancer, Immunity, Immune system, Oral cancer, Oropharyngeal cancer, Oral microbiota, Oral mucosa, Probiotic, Tumour progression