Oral and Oropharyngeal cancer constitute severe community health
problems across the globe. Annually about 400,000 new cases of oral cancer are
detected globally. Oral cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer in the world,
and it is the leading cause of death, particularly in the Southeast Asian region. In recent
times, a gradual surge in cases of oral cancer has been witnessed in many developed
countries, such as France. In the search for safe and effective therapy for cancer,
probiotics have gained recent attention from many research groups worldwide.
Probiotics have an advantageous effect on human health, which are experimentally and
clinically proven to exert overall beneficial effects. Probiotics are generally defined as
the sum of harmless live bacteria, molds, and yeasts that have beneficial effects on
human health. This chapter discusses the potential role of probiotics as anticancer
adjuvants owing to their modulatory effect on anticancer immunity. Anticancer
immunity-based properties include the restraint of the growth of microbiota engaged in
the making of mutagens and carcinogens and change in the metabolism of carcinogen
and DNA resistance from oxidative damage as well as regulation of the immune
system. At present, chemotherapy and immunotherapy are mostly preferred for the
treatment of oral cancer, but these treatments have the foremost disadvantage that
causes drug resistance and recurrence of the disease. To overcome such problems,
nowadays, probiotics have been recommended as complementary treatment modalities
for the development of new therapy along with standard chemotherapeutic and
immunotherapeutic agents by improving the immune system. Specific microbiota in the
human body supplies the production of the most useful metabolites that exert optimistic
properties on the immune system in opposition to various diseases such as cancer.
Keywords: Cancer immunoediting, Cancer, Immunity, Immune system, Oral cancer, Oropharyngeal cancer, Oral microbiota, Oral mucosa, Probiotic, Tumour progression
