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Review
. 2023 Jan;50(1):799-814.
doi: 10.1007/s11033-022-08023-7. Epub 2022 Nov 2.

Chemopreventive role of probiotics against cancer: a comprehensive mechanistic review

Shehzeen Noor  1 , Shaukat Ali  2 , Shumaila Riaz  1 , Iqra Sardar  1 , Muhammad Adeel Farooq  1 , Ayesha Sajjad  1
Affiliations
Review

Chemopreventive role of probiotics against cancer: a comprehensive mechanistic review

Shehzeen Noor et al. Mol Biol Rep. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

Probiotics use different mechanisms such as intestinal barrier improvement, bacterial translocation and maintaining gut microbiota homeostasis to treat cancer. Probiotics' ability to induce apoptosis against tumor cells makes them more effective to treat cancer. Moreover, probiotics stimulate immune function through an immunomodulation mechanism that induces an anti-tumor effect. There are different strains of probiotics, but the most important ones are lactic acid bacteria (LAB) having antagonistic and anti-mutagenic activities. Live and dead probiotics have anti-inflammatory, anti-proliferative, anti-oxidant and anti-metastatic properties which are useful to fight against different diseases, especially cancer. The main focus of this article is to review the anti-cancerous properties of probiotics and their role in the reduction of different types of cancer. However, further investigations are in progress to improve the efficiency of probiotics in cancer treatment.

Keywords: Anti-cancer activity; Gut microbiota; Immunomodulation; Metastasis; Probiotics.

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