Bacillus Calmette-Guérin therapy

This is a curated page. Report corrections to Microbewiki.

Summary of the Article

By Karina Kunka

This is an overview of a type of immunotherapy used to treat superficial and early-stage bladder cancers, and to prevent recurrence thereof. This particular type of immunotherapy utilizes a strain of attenuated Mycobacterium bovis to stimulate an immune response and cause direct cytotoxicity within the bladder cancer cells. Side effects are common, but typically not severe and manageable. It is the most commonly-used form of immunotherapy and remains a treatment of choice for managing of early-stage bladder cancers, as it is generally very effective at preventing recurrence of bladder cancer when maintenance therapy is used. Bacillus Calmette-Guérin is also used for a vaccine against tuberculosis infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis in humans, and important new implications for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin use in other types of cancer treatments are up and coming.

At right is a sample image insertion. It works for any image uploaded anywhere to MicrobeWiki.

The insertion code consists of:
Double brackets: [[
Filename: BCG_infected_cells.jpeg‎
Thumbnail status: |thumb|
Pixel size: |300px|
Placement on page: |right|
Legend/credit: Electron micrograph of the Ebola Zaire virus. This was the first photo ever taken of the virus, on 10/13/1976. By Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, then at the CDC.
Closed double brackets: ]]

Other examples:
Bold
Italic
Subscript: H₂O
Superscript: Fe³⁺

Introduce the topic of your paper. What is your research question? What experiments have addressed your question? Applications for medicine and/or environment?
Recent studies have found that the Pak1-dependent pathway activated by oncogenes is actually responsible for uptake of BCG via macropinocytosis.

A citation code consists of a hyperlinked reference within "ref" begin and end codes.

Introduction

Fluorescence microscopy of bladder cancer cells (blue and red) infected with BCG (green). This 2013 study by Redelman-Sidifound et al. found that the some cancer-causing mutations also make the cancer cells susceptible to BCG therapy.

Section 1

Include some current research, with at least one figure showing data.

Every point of information REQUIRES CITATION using the citation tool shown above.

Section 2

Include some current research, with at least one figure showing data.

Efficacy

Comparison of different BCG strains and chemotherapy with respect to recurrence. The majority of studies in this meta-analysis by Boehm et al. in 2017 showed that their respective strains of BCG significantly reduced bladder cancer recurrence compared to chemotherapy.

Mechanism of Action

Suggested mechanism of action of BCG therapy as determined by Redelman-Sidi et al. in 2014, showing uptake of BCG by bladder cancer cells to cytotoxicity and immune response.

References

Authored for BIOL 238 Microbiology, taught by Joan Slonczewski, 2017, Kenyon College.