Bacterial Gene Therapy
A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Microbiology and Immunology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 April 2022) | Viewed by 3722
Special Issue Editor
Interests: bacterial vectors for gene therapy; circulating microbial DNA; microbiota in disease; fecal microbiota transplantation; inflammatory bowel disease
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The field of gene therapy has experienced a tremendous boom over the last 10 years. Nowadays, more than 20 gene-based drugs are approved in human medicine worldwide. These are based on viral vectors or naked DNA. Bacteria have also been studied as vectors in gene therapy; however, despite successes in preclinical as well as clinical studies, no bacterial gene therapy preparation has been approved for standard clinical use so far.
Bacterial gene therapy includes several approaches, such as bactofection, bacterial protein delivery, transkingdom RNA interference or bacterial DNA vaccination. Strict regulations and safety concerns represent a barrier to the transition of these strategies to the clinics. Nevertheless, recent advances in molecular biomedicine and microbiome studies have put bacterial gene therapy back into play. Tools such as fecal microbiota transplantation or recombinant probiotics open new avenues for bacterial gene therapy strategies.
This Special Issue will cover recent advances in bacterial gene therapy of human as well as animal and plant disease. Original research articles, as well as reviews and perspectives, focusing on standard or novel approaches of bacterial gene therapy, clinical applications, molecular mechanisms, bacteria–host interactions, recombinant probiotics, bacterial vector design and related areas are welcome.
Prof. Roman Gardlik
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Bacterial vectors
- Bactofection
- Bacterial protein delivery
- Recombinant probiotics
- Synthetic biology
- Cancer therapy
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