Cancer Association with Bacterial Biofilm
摘要
The contemporary world, growing in a multidimensional field, faces the most complex health challenge, with major epidemic cases and the most untreated disease, cancer, which contributes to a major proportion of deaths worldwide (Minas et al. 2021). This is termed to be a devastating disease, with 9.6 million affected in 2018, which stands second, according to WHO statistics (2018). There are almost 110 different types of cancer found worldwide (Smilenov 2006). It is expected that there could be a 50% increase in oral cancers in consecutive years through the increased usage of tobacco (Dhage et al. 2025). The mortality rate of cervical cancer is found to be 350,000 annually worldwide, where the WHO’s prime objective is preventing it through HPV vaccination and screening (Tewari 2025) and aims to reduce it to 4 per 100,000 women in the next 60 years (Midhun and Murugesan 2025). There are almost 6.4 lakh new cases that are found reported in cervical cancer, which is the fourth most affected cancer (Rohlfes et al. 2025), and bladder cancer is the sixth most common cancer affecting the female population globally (Sung et al. 2020). The genetic, environmental, dietary conditions, population growth, aging, and lifestyle changes have been found to be the contributing factors of the disease for a major time period, where the biofilms are also now the most contributing factors for the disease (Gupta et al. 2025). Microbial colonization and tumorigenesis are found to be linked, where biofilms play an important role in stimulating immune responses by releasing cytokines and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Biofilm infections by bacteria are due to the underlying infections that have resistance to specific species of organisms and lead to the pathogenesis of chronic infections (Upadhyay et al. 2025). The extracellular polymeric substances and the biofilms together pave the way for protecting the cell wall boundary against stresses like nutritional, environmental, and antibiotic stress. Thus, conventional therapies do not function, as they cannot penetrate through these matrix proteins, paving the way for the progression of chronic stages of the malignancies (Kvich et al. 2024). The chapter gives insight into cancer and its differential models, highlighting their role along with the microbial environment by biofilm production, thereby emphasizing their significance in each type of cancer.