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About the Authors:
Barbara A. Fox
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4453-1861
Kiah L. Butler
Current address: Merck & Co Inc., Palo Alto, California, United States of America
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2357-5635
Rebekah B. Guevara
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8040-3453
David J. Bzik
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8592-4733Citation: Fox BA, Butler KL, Guevara RB, Bzik DJ (2017) Cancer therapy in a microbial bottle: Uncorking the novel biology of the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. PLoS Pathog13(9): e1006523. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006523
Editor: Laura J. Knoll, University of Wisconsin Medical School, UNITED STATES
Published: September 14, 2017
Copyright: © 2017 Fox et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The Bzik lab is funded by NIAID (R21AI129869). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: I have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: Kiah L. Butler is currently an employee of Merck. All other authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Cancers emerge after the immune system fails to control and contain tumors. Multiple tumor-specific mechanisms create tumor environments where the immune system is forced to tolerate tumors and their cells instead of eliminating them. The goal of cancer immunotherapy is to rescue the immune system’s natural ability to eliminate tumors [1]. Here, we uncork the unique biology of the bottle-shaped protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. We reveal how this microbe when engineered into a safe nonreplicating vaccine effectively breaks tumor control over the immune system, which then unleashes potent immunity against already established cancer, thereby promoting survival and preventing cancer recurrence.
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