Emerging New Treatments for Colon Cancer.

Colorectal cancer includes cancer of the rectum and colon. It is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths among men under 50 years of age. In 2022, over 1.9 million cases of CRC were reported, resulting in approximately 904,000 deaths worldwide. Factors like smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, familial history, and inflammation significantly contribute to the risk of CRC development. Additionally, bacterial infections from organisms like Bacteroides fragilis, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and Helicobacter pylori also play a role in increasing this risk. Conventional treatment methods for CRC typically involve surgery/polypectomy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Because of limitations like lack of target specificity, the risk of tumor relapse, and the potential for tumor resistance, there is a growing necessity for more individually tailored treatment strategies to improve the outcomes of patients with CRC. As such, emerging treatments like cancer vaccine, (CAR) T-cells, CAR-NK cells, macrophages, and stem cell engineering (particularly mesenchymal stem cells), dendritic vaccine, siRNA, and miRNA, hold significant promise in enhancing outcomes for CRC patients. Moreover, specific gut microbiomes like Bacteroides fragilis, Streptococcus gallolyticus, Enterococcus faecalis, and Escherichia coli, linked to CRC development, have been identified. Hence, modulating the gut microbiome to potentially enhance responses to CRC in high- -risk populations could be a new line of treatment. This modulation can be accomplished through dietary interventions, prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, antibiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). This review summarizes the most promising new emerging treatments in the fight against colon cancer.