Comparison of Anticancer Activities and Biosafety Between Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium ΔppGpp and VNP20009 in a Murine Cancer Model

Salmonella Typhimurium defective in guanosine 5′-diphosphate-3′-diphosphate (ppGpp) synthesis (ΔppGpp) is an attenuated strain with good biosafety and excellent anticancer efficacy. It has been widely applied in preclinical studies of anticancer therapy for various types of solid cancer. VNP20009 is another genetically modified auxotrophic strain with 108-kb deletion, purI(−), msbB(−), and many single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); it has shown promising therapeutic efficacy in various preclinical tumor models and entered phase I clinical trials. Here, the invasion activities and virulence of ΔppGpp were obviously lower than those of the VNP20009 strain when tested with cancer cells in vitro. In addition, the MC38 tumor-bearing mice showed comparable cancer suppression when treated with ΔppGpp or VNP20009 intravenously. However, the ΔppGpp-treated mice showed 16.7% of complete cancer eradication and prolonged survival in mice, whereas VNP20009 showed higher toxicity to animals, even with equal tumor size individually. Moreover, we found decreased levels of inflammatory cytokines in circulation but strengthened immune boost in tumor microenvironments of ΔppGpp-treated mice. Therefore, the engineered ΔppGpp has high potential for cancer therapeutics, and it is a promising option for future clinical cancer therapy.